Balta1701

QUOTE(sircaffey @ Jan 23, 2008 -> 03:01 PM) How long has it been since Colon has started pitching? Surgery was in August right? I'd think that report would be somewhat positive to know that he was touching 94 mph through 4 innings. Not really a shock that he tires after 4 IP. Looks like his velocity is increasing though. From what the reports I'm reading today are saying, I'm not sure he ever had surgery, but I'm almost certain he didn't have surgery at all in 2007. He partially tore a rotator cuff at the end of the 2005 season, and has spent the last 2 years trying to rehab through it. His attempts to pitch through that injury have helped build up other related problems with his elbow.

QUOTE(sox-r-us @ Jan 23, 2008 -> 02:28 PM) I do not get the "have to trade Uribe & Crede & even McDougal" crowd....why do you care if the Sox have an extra 10M payroll used as subs/flexibility/depth for the line up? Seriously....how does it matter? If we can trade them, thats cool but by not trading them, it is not the end of the world. It is not like there is a cannot-miss player out there in FA that we can spend on by trading these 2 guys and using that 10M for that player. Fields can be used as DH from time to time; so can Crede (giving Thome rest) Fields can be used as LF from time to time depending on splits against pitchers etc Uribe can be used as 2B and even as a SS to rest Cabrera from time to time .... Swisher can be used to play CF, RF and to play 1B too from time to time (giving Kong rest) Having Dotel, McDougal, Linebrink, Thornton and Jenks gives Ozzie lots of flexibility to play match ups to shut down the Tigers, Red Sox and Yankees when it matters after the 6th inning.... The injury to Crede really sunk us for the 1st half of the year last year....having depth is crucial; it is not like we will stay injury free for all of the season, especially with some of the vets (Kong, Dye, Thome) on this team Say Thome goes out for some games next year....wouldn't you be thrilled to have either Crede or Fields playing the DH spot now? Say Kong goes out for some games next year....wouldn't it be better to try Fields at 1B in that case? Or do you guys really miss the scrubs who were on the bench or starting at some point in the season last year? If we look at our roster...we have 9 starters including Thome. We currently seem to have a 12 man pitching staff. That brings us to 21. We need a backup catcher, so Hall clearly has a role. Backup OF...Owens. Backup IF...Ozuna Backup IF...Uribe Backup IF...Crede. Simple calculation here. 21 players plus 5 is 26, and that leaves no room for Alexi Ramirez or a 2nd backup OF. If the team wants to keep both Crede and Uribe, then that means Ozuna is gone, and Ramirez must go to AAA, or Fields goes to AAA. Depth is nice to some extent, but at some point, it becomes excessive to have too much depth at one spot because it costs you salary and hurts your ability to produce from the other positions.

Cam Cameron hired as OC by the Ravens.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Jan 23, 2008 -> 01:54 PM) Crede actually was pretty good in 2005, he had 4 good months out of 6, and it was only 2 really bad months that he had that brought his overall numbers down. If healthy (and obviously that's a big if), I think he can still hit around .270/25HR's, which with the defense he offers is pretty valuable for a 3rd baseman. On that we can all agree. But you know the problems as well as any of us do. If he comes back and is able to perform at that level next year, then he hits the FA market, gets you no compensatory picks because his 2007 was a disaster, and gets paid $10 mil a year by someone because his agent is Boras, so in the best circumstance for his performance, his trade value is still depressed.

QUOTE(sox4lifeinPA @ Jan 23, 2008 -> 01:04 PM) off to the extreme left. about a third the way up. LOL, it's about a couple centimeters tall.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 23, 2008 -> 12:59 PM) Anything is possible, but I am guessing upon closer examination it will end up being more like the man on the moon. An REM song from one of the rovers? sweet!

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 23, 2008 -> 12:24 PM) Don't look now, but the dead cat is bouncing. We are looking at a 500 point swing intraday on the futures. Based on what I'm reading, a good percentage of that is a rumor that the federal government may step in and use tax dollars to bail out some of these insurers that everyone is worried will go under and take half the financial market with them. Free Market capitalism rules!

QUOTE(sircaffey @ Jan 23, 2008 -> 12:23 PM) At this point Lowry is a better bet in the AL Central than Danks, Floyd, Broadway, Haeger, etc. It'd be wise to pick up someone we know can pitch at the Major League level. Aside from Haeger, I'll disagree with all of that.

QUOTE(BigSqwert @ Jan 23, 2008 -> 11:31 AM) Anyone know of a good, objective site that breaks down local candidates running for office? In most cases, nothing seems to be better than your local newspaper.

QUOTE(Dick Allen @ Jan 23, 2008 -> 11:27 AM) Lowry had an equal number of walks and strikeouts last year, playing in a very watered down NL. He would have a hard time in the AL Central IMO. Of course he would. But I think if you get this deal...you take it, because of the additional trade flexibility it gives you. Some people have wanted a long man in the bullpen. Picking up Lowry gives you that option...and it gives you that option while at the same time allowing you to move MMac to a team needing bullpen help, and thus you come out ahead by Crede's contract. Or you pick up Lowry and spin him off to a team in the NL needing a starter and thus you've turned Crede into whatever you got back for Lowry. The fact is, the market for injured 3rd basemen owed $5 million who are potential FA's after this season is a lot smaller than the market for average to below average starting pitchers owed what, $6 million over 2 seasons? Spin Lowry off to the Phillies, or the Astros, or the Mets, or some team who needs a starter, and use that guy to pick up an A ball player or two, or some formerly high ranked prospect down on his luck like one of those pitchers from the Mets.

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Jan 23, 2008 -> 10:25 AM) I agree the Sox would be lucky to get Lowry for Crede; I just don't think, from what I've seen of him and his numbers, that he would pitch well in the Cell. His peripherals are pretty terrible, I seem to recall some rather pedestrian stuff, though that may not be completely correct, and I'm not sure if he gets above 90 all the much. The way I look at it, he's due for some regression as it is; I still don't know how you put up a 1.55 WHIP and only put up a 3.92 ERA. Add to it that moving to the AL will increase his ERA, and moving from an upstart but mediocre division to one that's already among the best in the game will also probably increase his ERA slightly as well. I really don't think it's that far fetched to believe that moving to the AL could result in Lowry ending up with an ERA over 5.00 next year. So, as I said above, I do think the Sox would be lucky to get Lowry for Crede, but I still wouldn't do it, just because there are better ways to spend the money and I'm not sure Lowry is enough of an upgrade to be worth the $6.75 mill or so he's going to make over the next 2 years. I think you're right on all of these parts. But here's the counterpoint...I think Joe Crede has essentially zero value to me right now. He's a bill for $5 million at a position where we have a $400k player that he'd take time away from. Even if Lowry was a terrible fit for the Sox, I think he has more trade value than Joe Crede does by quite a bit, and he has more value to the White Sox as well. I for one would take anything I could get for Joe right now, and Lowry would actually be more than I expect to get.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 23, 2008 -> 10:06 AM) If JC was younger and more stable, i'd agree with you. But 3 big question makes is one too many. And I don't think Broadway or Egbert have as much chance of success as, say, Colon (yet). And I think its likely a 6th starter will be involved during the season. And I still look at our minor leagues and see several guys who could come up and be expected to be adequate in that role, even with Gio no longer being there. I think there's a decent chance that enough guys have solid seasons this year, (between Sisco, Egbert, Broadway, Haeger) that we'll want to move Jose just to clear another rotation spot for a young guy instead of just to find someone else to take on his contract. And I think that if the Mets and Royals aren't interested in Colon, then there's probably a strong case to be made that one of our AA guys could come up and have more success than Colon. I understand the specific concern on JC, hopefully we'll find out that a lot of his struggles last year were due in no small part to the personal issues he had to go through. If not though, then I still think we have enough depth to make that less of a worry.

QUOTE(Steve9347 @ Jan 23, 2008 -> 09:40 AM) My exact thoughts. You can't ignore how much the offense is improved with Swisher, Quentin, and Cabrera in... but we need SP and need to deal some of these extra pieces. I agree we need to move Crede's salary and Uribe's if at all possible, but I still say you guys are seriously underestimating the quality we have in our starting pitching...at least I hope you are.

QUOTE(iamshack @ Jan 23, 2008 -> 09:27 AM) Did a little research on the web, and this seems to be the appropriate oil for my car, and the appropriate time to change it in, but I am still not sure who is telling me the truth- the dealers/manufacturers of the cars, or the oil change franchises that stand to gain by getting you in there every 3k miles. I think part of the problem is that there is no firm answer...a lot depends on your driving habits. The performance of oil will vary a lot between different engines being worked at different intensities under different conditions, and there's just no way around it.

QUOTE(CanOfCorn @ Jan 23, 2008 -> 09:26 AM) Aren't the Sox still getting money from the Phils for Thome? That would drop the actual payroll number. But to the original question, I think Kenny has bounced back pretty well considering what happened to the Sox at the beginning. I don't know if both will go, but at least one of Uribe and Crede will go...I'm guessing Crede since he doesn't have the flexibility of playing multiple positions like Uribe does. Hopefully they both go. Something just below $7 million this year.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Jan 23, 2008 -> 06:20 AM) I hope some of you aren't thinking that Bush the elder just sat on the sidelines and said, I'm stating out of it. It's up to my son? You can bet all of his old supporters received a phone call. Like it or not, the business of politics is the same for both sides. Coke and Pepsi have to bottle their product and follow the same laws and compete in the same market. The business model stays fairly consistent between the two. What we see is the tip of the iceberg, the marketing. Lift up the hood and it's all the same. Of course they received a phone call, and I'd have been shocked if the old Clinton donors all haven't had a dozen meetings and phone calls from Bill. But I think the issue is that there's a fundamental difference between behind-the-scenes work on building the infrastructure of a campaign and out-in-front work as an attack dog. That's the key question.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 23, 2008 -> 09:13 AM) On many new cars, actually, 10k is now the normal interval. On our hybrid for example, they recommend doing one at the first 3000, then only going every 10000 after that. The civic, for example, also includes some sort of calculator that actually figures out based on your driving habits how long you should go before changing most of those fluids, including the oil.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Jan 23, 2008 -> 09:02 AM) You would be surprised by how many people stretch that oil change to 10,000 miles, never look at Trans fluid, check their coolent unless the heater doesn't blow, etc. Even the fuel level. Not many people realize that the fuel pump in most cars is cooled by the gas in the tank. When you dip below 1/4 tank in many cars, the pump runs hotter. It's a little thing that may never cause a problem, but why risk it on a routine basis? Never knew that. So that's basically a reason to stay above 1/4 of a tank for most normal work in vehicles eh? FWIW in this thread, I've been driving an 06 Civic EX for about 1.5 years now and have basically no complaints. I don't put a ton of use into it (bout 8000 miles or so thus far I think) but it did a nice job doing the 2 way trip from Pasadena to NW Indiana last year for my wedding (averaged about 39 mpg on the road). Looking back I sort of wish I'd gotten the hybrid because I saw a deal on one about a month after I'd bought mine that might have made it worth it, but I'd be relying a lot on the resale value to make up for that because I don't put a lot of miles on the thing. Do really like the way it feels, drives very well, very nimble, and had what seemed to me to be significant upgrades over the Corolla in terms of things like the safety features and the manufacturing (although that could have changed with the next model of the Toyotas). The other thing I would keep in mind in terms of the hybrids is that we're approaching the era where the next generation of hybrids, either ones using upgraded batteries or some sort of fully plug-in hybrid system will be available at reasonable costs (probably within a couple years, 2010 is the time when most of them are saying they'll have them to market), so that's another thing to take into account.

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Jan 22, 2008 -> 08:54 PM) It's pretty much the only option out of those 4 You know, I think eventually you guys are gonna wind up eating your words on this...not because I have a huge amount of confidence in any specific guy, but just off of the numbers. Any time you give me a group of 4 moderately talented guys who are all fairly young and have moved their way all the way up someone's system to AAA, if you ask me what the odds are that 1 of those 4 will be a solid success story even after some early struggles, I'd say those chances are pretty good. You may not like those guys now, but the odds are at least one of them is going to turn into a solid major league pitcher. Maybe more.

QUOTE(Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 22, 2008 -> 08:13 PM) Ok seriously the Bill Clinton did good with the economy stuff has to stop. It's become like Lock Ness or Big Foot in mythical size. Bill Clinton was handed, on a freakin silver platter, the Internet. He did nothing to help the Internet, he did nothing to promote the Internet. He was handed a brand spanking new billion dollar market. Of course the economy is going to flurish. And even that's not true because year 6, 7 and 8 of his presidency the economy was going downhill. I think Bush and his evil regime should be given ten times the credit for how well they've kept the economy going not only after inheriting the internet bubble bust, but also 9/11. But anyways... Clearly I don't want to defend Clinton too much, but something has to be said for the stable fiscal environment that they generated, and even in a time of expansion, bringing the budget back into balance after all the work the previous 2 administrations did to knock it out of balance was, for a time, very impressive. Furthermore, that expansion did translate into jobs and growth in a way that the housing bubble did not, so there clearly must have been something different about it. Furthermore, until the very end of his presidency, it's really, really hard to say the economy was struggling. The bubble peaked in 2000, that was year 8, and growth didn't slow down until the end of that year. On the other hand, in hindsight, there are several areas where he just kind of coasted along when a lot more could have been done. For example, he wasted perhaps the last chance the U.S. had to invest real dollars to try to build an set of alternative energy generation systems before the price of fossil fuels went through the roof (with a legit investment program under that administration, the stuff we're getting now in terms of solar, wind, hybrid cars, etc., could easily have been available en masse years ago). He did, at a lot of levels, just kind of coast with what came to him, rather than getting out and actually leading the country where it needed to go.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 22, 2008 -> 07:48 PM) If after Super Tuesday its pretty close, then there will not be any landslide of supers. That only happens if there is a far and away clear leader. Hillary winning California by 10 points, or winning a solid majority of states that day, then that's all it will take.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 22, 2008 -> 07:37 PM) You keep making that same leap - that Clinton = Superdelegates. Except, look around - since Iowa, more and more establishment folks are distancing themselves from Hillary. I'm not saying that Obama is is going to get most of them either - I'm saying there is nothing at all automatic about them going to Clinton. And my point is...most of them are uncommitted for a reason at this point, because they don't want to get caught backing the one who loses. But once the votes are in, you will see a landslide of them towards whichever one wins that Tuesday and the succeeding days. If there's a clear winner on that day, even with just a plurality, there will be a landslide, especially for Hillary as the establishment person. And the states like Iowa and Nevada who haven't yet fully committed will commit for the person in the lead after that day to fill in the gaps. If Hillary pulls out a solid win in CA, then it's over unless BO sweeps pretty much every other state other than NY.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 22, 2008 -> 06:27 PM) It doesn't have to. This is what I don't get with everyone's view on this - people seem to be ignoring Edwards' presence in the election. For EITHER Clinton or Obama, all they have to do to be alive in Denver is make sure the other doesn't get 50%. And as long as Edwards is still pulling his 15% (which he has been, other than the NV caucus), then its pretty likely that neither will make that 50% level. Therefore, this race is nowhere near over. All these little things - debates, single state wins... have effect of course. But there is soooo much left to go. And frankly, I don't think the Dem establishment is behind Clinton anyway, for lots of reasons (her high negs and vulnerability in a national election for one). Now, if Edwards drops out before Denver and backs Clinton, then I agree - its over. I just for the life of me can't imagine that there's any way an establishment candidate at 40-45% in delegates would lose at a convention where 1/5 of the delegates are superdelegates. The fact is, if Clinton wins the plurality of the votes on Super Tuesday and the remaining primaries, enough superdelegates will hop over to her side to push her to 50+1. And if not, then states like Nevada where the delegates aren't written in stone yet will fill in the blanks. If there's a clear leader in delegates after super tuesday, they'll win on the first ballot at the convention if it even gets close to that far.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 22, 2008 -> 06:17 PM) Well, let's see how a few more weeks of this argumentative style effects that. It hasn't been like this yet, until recently. It might work against her. Or for her. Hard to tell. Even if it works against her...it's not working 10% in the polling data against her in California.

That's basically what I'm suggesting. Hillary Clinton needs to do a Mel Gibson impression to lose it from here on out. Simply having people say Obama won a narrow victory in a debate, or one or two random things turned nasty amongst staffers isn't going to do it. The demographic reality appears to be that women make up a much larger portion of the Democratic electorate than men, and that group is carrying the day.