Balta1701

Finally saw Anderson today. Looks like a totally different player at the plate. Knees more bent, better balance, less stiff. Made an out his first time up and I thought he looked good. His next time up he hit a ball hard enough to make Thome jealous. I don't know for certain that it will carry over. But he looks like a completely different player. He looks like the kind of guy a pitcher wouldn't want to see come up. At all.

QUOTE(Greg The Bull Luzinski @ Mar 23, 2008 -> 03:24 PM) Between Quenten, BA, Swisher, Owens, Dye, and potentially Ramirez, our outfield situation is suddenly very crowded. While this is certainly a better situaion than playing Andy Gonzalez in the OF, I also share the sentiment that I wish we could move Dye to let the young guys play. Dam NTC. I'm going to look at the bright side for now. After watching the game today, I'm worried about JD. He looks baaaaad. He could turn it around, but if his legs aren't under him again this year...we've at least got options to sit him early and give him time to get right. And while Quentin looks good, I think that giving him at least a month to get back in baseball shape is not going to be a bad thing.

GIVE. BRIAN. ANDERSON. THE. STARTING. CF. JOB. NOW. WOW.

QUOTE(nitetrain8601 @ Mar 22, 2008 -> 10:57 PM) Guy I want most on this team is OJ Mayo. I think I agree with you on a decent amount of stuff based on your post, but I'm still just not sold on OJ Mayo. Or for that matter, on Eric Gordon. I just don't think either of them have really showed me that plugging them in to our lineup is going to be a quick fix. But, I think the back court is the place that the overhaul should happen. Between Gooden, Tyrus, and Noah, with Gray as a 4th option, I think we actually have a solid frontcourt that if we ever develop it or ever, you know, stop playing 4 guards and Gooden for 10 minute periods down the stretch as leads bleed away (Seriously, how many leads does this small lineup need to lose for the Bulls before Boylan realizes..."hmmm, rebounding down the stretch might be useful"). If you pencil down Goodon, TT, and Noah for 30 minutes a game between those 3 positions, I think the Bulls set up a solid front court rotation next year. I'm less sold on the back court though. Ben Gordon is looking to me like a time bomb. He didn't get his contract this year and it showed. He clearly was missing a lot this season. Instead of taking a step forwards, he took a step backwards. He doesn't look to make anything happen for anyone but himself, he's not a ball handler, he's not getting better at his weaknesses, he wants a lot more money than what he's worth to this team, and he's convinced he's an all star starter if he ever gets the minutes, which he doesn't earn. He's a hard worker by all accounts, but I'm just not sure he's a smart worker. I'm sorta happy with Thabo and Hughes...Hughes would be hard to move now, but he has a contract that expires in the Wade/Lebron/Melo year, which makes him very valuable as a trading chip in a year or two, he's actually able to slash in to the lane and break down a defense or draw a foul, which is what Gordon seemingly refuses to ever try, despite the fact that he should be great at it as fast as he is. He's guaranteed to make some mistakes. But I can live with some of those. And Thabo's development this year, although it's been stunted since he got hurt/since his minutes vanished when he came back, but a 15 point 8 rebound guard who can play real good defense could be darn useful. I think that the PG position is where we have to try to upgrade, is the message overall. I like our rotations in the front court, at SG if we can trim away some of the excess people, but with the way Hinrich has performed this year I just can't see him carrying this team.

QUOTE(Greg The Bull Luzinski @ Mar 23, 2008 -> 03:02 PM) IIRC, Dye never really looks good until about May or June. He always seems to look extra slow with the bat until the weather warms up. I am not sure if data supports this. That said, I still think resigning him will be looked at as a mistake. On the positive side, we are seeing a lot from our young players, ie Ramirez, Quinton, Swishers, Anderson, and even Owens. I am just worried that they will not play enough this year because of a "win now" mentality and salary considerations. The numbers the last couple years do back you up on JD being a slow starter, but there's been an injury related reason for almost all of those slow starts. In 07, his legs weren't really healthy until around the AS Break. In 05, he was coming back from a bad, season ending injury with Oakland the year before, IIRC, or something along those lines. In 06, he started the season healthy and was on a tear until the end of August. Hopefully KW is starting to see that maybe the JD signing was something of a mistake...but if Quentin can get healthy, he's in a perfect place to turn JD in to a trading chip either this year or at the end of this season. And even if all he can get is Willy Mo Pena or soemthing like that for JD...that's useful. And it saves us a bunch on salary.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Mar 23, 2008 -> 02:58 PM) I am more worried about Danks this season than I am Floyd. Danks just doesn't seem to have any sort of consistent approach, physically or mentally. He's all over the place. The wierd thing is, he clearly was throwing some good pitches today. The stuff is there. He just had to get his head in the game. He's got some things to work out, but all that may take is time. I def. agree with you on him being all over the place today. Some good work by AJ, Fields, and Quentin with the bat this inning. Right now, It's certainly looking to me like we'd be better off with Quentin, Anderson, Owens, and Swisher in the OF before the $11 million WS MVP.

Man, you guys are right. First time I've watched a game this spring, and Anderson looks like a totally different hitter up there. God I hope they don't bury him on the bench this season, get him some freaking AB's even if he's not the starter. Please. Random comments: Jermaine Dye looks freaking terrible at the plate. My word he looks bad right now. Don't know what else to say about it. He just looked really bad. Danks was hitting 93 on the gun today and was doing so legit on some of those fastballs. He made some really good pitches. Just not enough. He just couldn't throw strikes around inning 3-4. He still looked like he had good stuff when he threw it, but it looked like he just wasn't in to the game mentally after about the 2nd inning. Owens went up to the plate pretty aggressive today. I know a lot of people don't like him because he doesn't have the pop, but he looks like a guy who could legit hit well over .300 this season. The one at bat where he worked the count a little, he successfully fouled off some pitches and looked ok in the process (until striking out). He clearly didn't want to fall behind Greinke, and the leadoff triple came right out of that. If Quentin ever gets healthy...man that kid is going to be something. AJ seems like he's lining the ball right at everyone. Ramirez looked terrible against Greinke.

IIRC, when the Sox won the title in 05, they were damn good on the road. Don't those long road trips by definition get balanced by a lot of games at home?

Well, a last thanks to Kelvin Sampson for building up our hopes by setting up on paper an excellent season and then finding out that he hid a land mine underneath that paper. How's that for mixed angry metaphors?

QUOTE(lostfan @ Mar 21, 2008 -> 08:24 PM) You don't have to "believe" the antisemitism ties because it's absolutely true, some people don't even try to hide it. It just makes me shake my head. We've had a top 5-ish payroll for a few years now. Not to thread hijack, but if you want to complain about reasons that jobs are leaving the U.S., don't get mad about our high corporate tax rates b/c in the grand scheme of things they're almost trivial, be mad about the very quiet sodomizing we are taking from China in our trade deficit with them. If you owned a company would you pay an American $45K a year or would you pay an Indian or Chinese worker to do the exact same job for about $10K, with no tariffs? If the dollar keeps going the way it's going right now...

Link

Heyman.

Someone the other day was asking why the Sox settled on Danks and Floyd when they could have gone after someone like Joe Blanton in the A's firesale. I think this is why.

Maybe we should just wait a month in to the season for Hawk to come up with one?

QUOTE(RME JICO @ Mar 21, 2008 -> 05:08 PM) C-RAM? Cuban Ramirez Or, drop the hyphen, you're down to one Syllable, with Cram.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Mar 21, 2008 -> 04:49 PM) Pretty easy, A-Ram on the White Sox is Alexei Ramirez. Theres only one on this team. How is that hard? And what happens when the Crosstown series roll around and no one has a clue who people are referring to?

QUOTE(knightni @ Mar 21, 2008 -> 04:46 PM) X-Ram? It's either that or Lexi. Do we do this the democratic way and put up a vote?

QUOTE(Alpha Dog @ Mar 21, 2008 -> 04:17 PM) http://news.findlaw.com/ap/other/1110//03-...0105002_06.html So are we going to go now to posting every home invasion crime that takes place in this country and saying "oh if only this person had a gun". What happens if it turns out by some chance that the gun used in the killing actually belonged to the people living there? In that hypothetical, would you suddenly change your mind and want guns banned, because if there hadn't been a gun in the house she'd still be alive? Or, she's a 45 year old woman. Would you expect her to be well trained? They have 2 kids. There's a lot of potential for an accident there. Should I go and start finding every listing of a gun related accident and post those in response to every gun crime you post? Is any of that going to be productive?

QUOTE(Dick Allen @ Mar 21, 2008 -> 03:22 PM) Good and bad should be taken with a grain of salt at this point of time. On that we agree. Which is why the "Gavin Floyd sucks and should be cut tomorrow!" thread that popped up after his last outing was so frustrating and annoying.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Mar 21, 2008 -> 03:19 PM) Ah, it only works when he's BAD in spring training to determine we should be worried, good outings must be taken with a grain of salt. OK. And importantly, it also only works for people we don't like, like Floyd. People who liked the Dotel signing felt free to brush off his disastrous outing yesterday, and they feel free to brush off a good outing by Floyd today. But bad outings by Floyd...now that's where you learn what you have.

QUOTE(Dick Allen @ Mar 21, 2008 -> 02:44 PM) Quentin has been the forgotten man this spring. Well, to be fair, he's still considered less than healthy and he's only hitting .227. He needs time to get back healthy.

QUOTE(Elgin Slim @ Mar 21, 2008 -> 02:13 PM) Great observations. As to what I referred to earlier, I think that the gun is 3 mph slow, judging from how many of Floyd's high fastballs have been fouled off. If he was throwing 89-91 those would be out of the park. Furthermore on the gun, there's no way that Zito is throwing fastballs at 81-83 mph. Sadly....yes it is actually possible that Zito is throwing 81-83. That's pretty much where he's at now. Did I ever say how happy I was when someone else signed him?

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Mar 21, 2008 -> 01:57 PM) So for those of us who missed it... was that first-batter triple off Floyd a real triple, or an OF bungle? Because in the 2nd and 3rd that I've seen, Floyd has looked pretty good. If you note this thread...the immediate response was to blame Owens...

QUOTE(Vance Law @ Mar 21, 2008 -> 01:01 PM) Is anyone a brain-genius with all of the rules of waivers? I don't understand why it was so difficult to get the details. I understand that the Sox can't comment on a player on waivers. What about an official from MLB or the commissioners office? Nobody was able to determine whether or not it was revocable or irrevocable waivers, and as it turned out (revocable) everyone was wrong. Is there literally no way for this to be determined until after the fact? As far as I understand it, no, there is no official way to determine what is happening on the waiver wires until a move is officially made. The only way people ever learn what players are put on waivers, what players pass through, and what players are pulled back is by leaks, which aren't always clear or complete.

The NL West will be viewed by the end of the year as the best division in baseball. (We're supposed to be bold, right?)