Balta1701

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I like how the link to this article includes the 2 words "Inge" and "Mad". Looks like they'll be trying him back behind the plate this year.

Do teams need a chaplain?

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 28, 2008 -> 02:23 PM) There's a topless Britney video on Youtube? I mean... yeah, that was a heck of a speech! The question now is...which one of those 2 options would you actually want to see?

Obama's South Carolina speech has passed up a topless video of Britney Spears as the #1 video on Youtube, and is now #2 on the list of "favorited" videos. #1 on that list of course is a Ron Paul video.

In a pretty rare victory...made even more rare by the fact that Senators Clinton and Obama showed up to vote...the Dems have successfully filibustered an attempt to ram through a FISA update that granted amnesty to any telecom company that joined in Mr. Bush's illegal wiretapping programs.

QUOTE(CWSGuy406 @ Jan 28, 2008 -> 02:08 PM) It doesn't mean that at all. So if he hits .500 during Spring Training, it means he's going to produce as a high level? Owens ZiPS are a pretty fair estimate -- and they have no bias (that I or you may hold): .261/.325/.338. SS2k brought up Otis Nixon, a very quick glance tells me that seems to be a pretty fair comp -- league average OBP, absolutely miserable slugging percentage with 50+ SBs a year (at a 75% clip). That's fine for a fourth outfielder, but I don't want a player like that starting for me (especially when there are better options -- i.e. Quentin). Butler, OTOH, doesn't seem like a great comp. If he gets 400 PA's though...while he's used as a sub that allows us to keep Quentin, Swisher, and in order of increasing importance Konerko, Dye, and Thome healthy...then he is not a bad option at all. And if I were the one running things, which thankfully I'm not...that's how I'd use him, as a quasi-everyday OF, shifting around either him or Swisher so that I can make sure that my guys, especially the old guys like Dye and Thome who clearly we've seen can get banged up and struggle because of it, then I think everyone would be pretty happy.

One of Mr. Bush's guests tonight appears to be in the country illegally... In the sense that she was diagnosed as HIV positive and there is a decade-old prohibition of anyone who his HIV positive entering the country.

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Jan 28, 2008 -> 01:45 PM) I'd completely disagree that Podsednik did a good job leading off in 2005, let alone "more than" one. He was an adequate leadoff hitter. The offense in general in 2005 was absolutely pitiful; pitching, defense, and the 3-run homer was what won the Sox games in 2005, and that dates back to good old Earl Weaver. Ozzie Guillen was just as volatile too, so it worked out wonderfully. I think I have to disagree with this, simply from watching the team in 05. In the first half, before Pods got hurt, he was excellent. There were games he simply controlled unlike anyone else in that lineup, entirely with his speed. There were a ton of games, especially in April and May when we built that big lead, that we won solely because of the work of Pods and Iguchi. Konerko, Dye, and Crede all had pretty bad starts/bad months of May, AJ wasn't hitting that great, Carl Everett was Carl Everett, Uribe was Uribe, but we were able to eek out a lot of wins because the 2 guys at the front of the lineup were excellent at manufacturing runs and doing their jobs. Just from watching that team, the difference between the 1st and 2nd halfs, where Pods was healthy and was hurt, was huge on the offensive end. Pre all star we were #10 in MLB in runs scored, post all star when Pods was hurt we were #18.

QUOTE(daa84 @ Jan 28, 2008 -> 01:39 PM) Im not sure if its exactly a good thing because of the inherent injury risk, but a good chunk of quentin's obp is explained by HBPs too....he was hit 112 times in 1618 PAs in the minors...thats about 1 every 15 plate appearances Do those get counted as BB's in stat lists? Because that's what I was going off of. To answer my own question, no, there's a separate line for those in the Baseball Cube stats. So he's still taking 70 or so walks a year and being plunked 20 times. You know, yeah, sometimes they do get hurt, but there's always something I like about having a good, patient hitter who stands up close to the plate. Especially if he has some power. Because it sometimes seems to throw a pitcher off, get him stuck working on the outside corner all the time because he doesn't want to hit the guy.

QUOTE(lvjeremylv @ Jan 28, 2008 -> 01:23 PM) I'll go back to what I said about Podsednik - he didn't have any power either, yet his style of play is what set the tone for the entire mode of our offense in 2005. Get em on, get em over, and get em in. Fans knew that if Scott could get his way on base, he was going to steal 2nd (and often times, 3rd as well) - and the opposition knew it too. His job wasn't to hit the long ball or hit for a high slugging percentage. His job was to get on base and create havoc for the other team. That's something that Owens is capable of doing, and I don't think we should all dismiss the importance of that. We have plenty of hitters that will hit plenty of home runs in 2008. I just hope there are people on base when they happen. The beauty of the Swisher and Quentin trades is that...if those guys play up to their levels...we should have solved those problems. Nick Swisher is an OBP machine. In a down year for him last year with no lineup protection, he took 100 walks and had an OBP of .381. Put him in front of Thome/Konerko/Dye and those numbers would be expected to go up even more. Quentin's career minor league OBP is .427. Although that's still average-heavy because he's hit over .300 at most of his stops, he's still been good for about 70 walks a year in 500 or so AB's. Joe Crede usually took about 25 walks a season. 30 in a good year. Fields in his minor league stints was usually putting up 60-70. Juan Uribe...well, what more do I need to say? Richar showed some average patience last year, and his BB rate from last year would translate to about 50 walks over a full season, which is right in line with what we'd have gotten from Iguchi. Owens...well, I think that although he's raw, his numbers suggest he has a shot at being a decently patient hitter if he gets a full time chance, and a .350-.360 OBP is not unreasonable for him at all. Compared to where we were with Erstad and Pods and Uribe all in the same lineup (Pods's problem not being that he couldn't take a walk, but that at the end he couldn't do much else), and we've significantly upgraded our OBP this year.

8 polls of Florida were released today. In this average, Romney comes out with about a 2 point lead, although McCain appears to have some momentum.

QUOTE(lvjeremylv @ Jan 28, 2008 -> 12:49 PM) Good point, assuming Quentin is healthy. Keep in mind, though, that if Quentin is in the Sox lineup, that will put Swisher in CF, which hurts us defensively as opposed to having Owens in CF and Swisher in LF. Owens is not such a good CF that the difference here will be very large, unless Swisher is just godawful out there. He has to be Mackowiak level, where him being out there costs us a run or two a game, before it really catches up with us. If we were talking the difference between Anderson and Swisher defensively...ok, that's pretty big, but the difference with the bats is even bigger. I'm hoping there's a solid chance that Ozzie uses his top 4 OF's in a way to give Owens about 400 at bats, and uses him mainly to rest guys like Konerko, Thome, and Dye more often than he has the last 2 years (by putting Swisher at 1b fairly often that is). After seeing how injury and age caught up with people, particularly Thome and Dye last year, I think that would be a good idea. My worry, on the other hand, is that oz will use them like he has guys in the past...he identifies his biggest 2 or 3 guys and puts them out there every day until they break down, while he always makes sure to get plenty of rest/time off for the younger guys who shouldn't have the injury issues. That's kinda how I felt Dye, Thome, Konerko have been used the last 2 years...they had to ask for a day off, whereas lesser guys were always forced to take days off.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 28, 2008 -> 11:05 AM) So we got two lottery tickets for a guy who we were going to let walk away in the first place. That is fine with me. ^^^. I was going to be pretty surprised if we couldn't pull off something like this, with as good of an arm as Aardsma has. So, just in advance, who do we blame when AA turns his career around and they move Papelbon to the rotation to make room for him?

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Jan 28, 2008 -> 10:06 AM) We can also expect the president to urge the Senate not to slow or derail the passage of the all-important stimulus package by trying to add pesky items like extending unemployment benefits and including rebates for seniors living wholly of of Social Security. Presumably though he'll speak at some point in favor of extending his tax cuts indefinitely.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 28, 2008 -> 09:47 AM) So what did it look like if you threw out the Clinton recession/post 9-11? Will President Clinton be able to throw out the upcoming housing market recession when she gets in office?

God I love having the NYT on my side. It's remarks like this that just make it all worth it. 2nd paragraph. A slight bit of analysis is applied: Envy of Most presidents = envy of his father, it appears.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 28, 2008 -> 07:05 AM) Do you have clue one about back surgery? Because I know enough to know that you avoid it unless absolutely necessary. There are serious risks involved. Its not like a labrum repair or something like that. And yet, the team still felt his injury was serious enough to recommend the surgery to him nearly a year before he got it, because they were convinced it was the right move. I'll still side with the team doctors on this one, regardless of how many times people repeat that "oh back surgery is risky" mantra. And you know what? History already proved me right.

Some of the things we can expect; bashing Democrats in the Senate for not giving him a bill that gives amnesty to all the telecom companies that spied on Americans without warrants for him (it's going to be interesting to see how they spin this, can they really start talking about the "Brave telecom industry" without inviting a backlash?), various small items to help the economy/housing market, and a probably a bunch on how great things are in Iraq. He'll also bash earmarks now that the Dems are in control of congress, without noting that there's been a non-trivial dropoff in earmarks since the Dems took over Congress.

QUOTE(Dick Allen @ Jan 27, 2008 -> 05:20 AM) I guess Ozzie is quoted as saying Garcia may not pitch at all in 2008. This probably makes his price even cheaper for 2009 and unless KW goes into a total rebuild, which is unlikely, increases the chances of a return IMO. I probably wouldn't mind as much bringing Garcia in if he wasn't expected to pitch this year, or at the earliest was in August/September. I just don't want us to get in the situation where we're forced to remove one of the kids from the rotation in May/June regardless of performance because we have to get the veteran in. If he's not expected until late in the season, then either we bench Danks again for the last month to save his arm, or next offseason we have Garcia in the mix and that makes the team more comfortable in moving Jose.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 27, 2008 -> 11:39 AM) All good points (though I think that if the Dems are a near-lock for the Prez, unless its against McCain), but, if Edwards is indeed motivated by trying to juice the best post possible out of this... then his motivation will be to hold out. He's also young enough to still have a shot to be involved in politics for 25 more years if that's what he really wants. He doesn't want to wind up being the guy who gets blamed for a Dem loss in 08 because he wouldn't let his delegates go for 6 months. That's an awful lot of fundraising and advertising time that would just be wasted, and he knows that. He'd strike a deal with one of them pretty quick, come March or April probably, if it becomes clear that he's the decider. After the Swift Vets got up on the air while Kerry was unable to respond because of financing limits, hopefully people have learned their lesson.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 27, 2008 -> 11:32 AM) You think so? Assuming that the race is still to be had (no nominee with significantly more than 50% of delegates) before Denver, what is the motivation to do that earlier? Just curious. To keep his name from being trashed by the media as he holds out (the greedy SOB's demanding the VP slot and neither side wants to give it to him!), to allow for some measure of party unity in the months coming up to the convention, and to generally give the Dems a shot.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Jan 27, 2008 -> 09:48 AM) For that reason alone, I could never vote for the man. Talk about an endorsement he DOESN'T need. It may hurt him in your eyes in the general, but I think this one is vital for the primaries. 2 of the areas Obama has struggled with have been the older, long-term, white Democrats. The kind of Democrats for whom the name "Kennedy" means an awful lot. In the past 2 days, he's scored 2 of them. It may still not be enough, but barring some recent nobel prize winner stepping in, that might be as big of an endorsement as he could get.

Oh, and, like every other team in the league, if B-More would like Uribe...as long as we're not picking up the salary, I think we're pretty much all in on it.

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Jan 26, 2008 -> 07:28 PM) Better speed than who? Quentin? Sure but who gives a s*** really? Owens? No. Corey's typically in the low teens in homeruns and doesn't really hit doubles. He's also incapable of hitting anywhere higher than 9th in the lineup, is a god awful OBP hitter and is going to make at least $4M next year. Patterson hit 8 home runs last year.