Balta1701

By the way, back onto the original topic of this thread...I think there's certainly 1 way to send Crede to the minors if we wanted to try that. Call it a rehab assignment. Given that he's coming off the 60 day DL I'm sure there's some way to make that work.

QUOTE(BigSqwert @ Jan 5, 2008 -> 03:48 PM) The Clinton News Network poll has a dead heat in NH. Both Obama and Clinton at 33%. Which right now stands as something of an outlier from the other polls out there aside from the tracking polls (which still usually include either small sample sizes or some pre-Iowa days) Edit, you know, I'm not so sure about that now. Right now it looks like there's one population of polls that has Obama up by like 8, and another population with it roughly tied, and then there's 1 poll skewing Pro-Hillary (although with a big 1 day tracking poll bump for Obama yesterday) balancing those out.

QUOTE(Athomeboy_2000 @ Jan 5, 2008 -> 01:29 PM) American Res. Group is showing similar numbers, but as I have said, I dont trust them. Well, the one thing worth noting about ARG is that they're actually based in New Hampshire, and so hypothetically NH polls should be their bread and butter.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Jan 5, 2008 -> 03:35 PM) Ok and who DO they want? Their behavior has strongly suggested they'd love Giuliani. They've done things such as allowing Rudy to freely use Fox News clips in their ads while denying that same right to other campaigns, and we've got the statements by Judith Regan in that lawsuit against NewsCorp alleging that Fox tried to kill the Kerik story to help out the Rudy campaign.

QUOTE(Chisoxfn @ Jan 5, 2008 -> 02:17 PM) See, that argument I can at least buy into (whether the Angels would even be suited trading Kochman for Konerko because you could make a case that Kochman is younger and practically as good, although Paulie puts up much more power and wasn't protected (Kochman rarely, if ever played against lefties, which obviously inflates certain numbers). Nor was Kochman one of the key cogs of the lineup (something Paulie always has been). It might also be worth noting that Konerko at least so far has been a much better RBI guy than Kotchman despite their similar OPS numbers. Last year in a down year for Paulie he still knocked in 90 runs despite the fact that the only guy ever on base in front of him was Thome (The Halos had a much better OBP than us last year). If you're looking for lineup punch, and you have guys who are already getting on base, you need someone to knock them in.

Who would you take in a matchup of Chuck Norris and Wilford Brimley?

QUOTE(Wanne @ Jan 5, 2008 -> 02:10 PM) One thing that struck me on some of the Angel forums I read was people were pretty much 50/50 on Kotchman as well. The trade really doesn't make much sense for them unless they do something with him. If the Angels clear out an OF or two so that they finally can actually winnow themselves down to 4 of the guys, then they could afford to use their DH spot at 1b and play both of them.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The next time this version of the Angels' Front Office successfully trade some of their young guys for a veteran that their team could help their team will be the first. And I'll be bloody shocked.

Mitt Romney has reportedly won the Wyoming Republican Caucuses. And now, watch as the entire country realizes...."Wyoming had an election today?"

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Jan 5, 2008 -> 12:46 PM) I just cannot stand Bill O'Reilly. By the way, there's a lot of grumbing about Obama not being "left" enough and that Republicans are the ones pushing him over the top. If true, that's not necessarily a bad thing, IMO. I just wish that he "got" Iraq, but I do have a sneaky feeling if he gets nominated his tune is going to change on that issue somewhat. Well, there are 2 points I can make about Obama's position on the Spectrum. From my side, the positive thing I'd say is that in Iowa, BO didn't just win Iowa thanks to his record turnout amongst independents. According to the entrance polls, Obama won both self-identified independents and self-identified Democrats, although he was stronger amongst the Indy's. So he's actually attracting a pretty broad spectrum of our side, which is exactly what I think his campaign wants. And second, right now, Obama is being attacked from the right by the Clinton campaign and from the Left by the Edwards campaign. And when you're being attacked from both sides...somehow each one rings more hollow.

You can tell you're the front runner on the Dem side when Bill O'Reilly starts assaulting your staffers.

The New Hampshire GOP has withdrawn itself as a sponsor of tomorrow night's GOP debate, in protest of Fox Noise's decision to exclude Ron Paul from the debate.

QUOTE(sircaffey @ Jan 5, 2008 -> 10:43 AM) You're right. Although if the only way to get Kendrick (with Santana) is to take Matthews, that's 2 positions added a very low cost so Matthews contract is diffused across those positions. I think the Sox would be willing to do that as by all indications, a trade of Konerko is not to free up salary. Perhaps if we were taking on Matthews's horrendous contract, we could convince the Angels to take Contreras to lessen some of that blow.

QUOTE(max power @ Jan 5, 2008 -> 11:23 AM) Brooks Robinson's trade value only goes up, never down. Given that right now his trade value is equivalent to the value of a $4.5 million lottery ticket, that's probably true. His value can not go down from here.

QUOTE(BaseballNick @ Jan 4, 2008 -> 08:27 PM) Per Rotoworld Because names in the Mitchell report are in high demand right now, I tells ya.

QUOTE(Tony82087 @ Jan 4, 2008 -> 07:28 PM) I really hope this isn't true, because if it is, the trade would be an disaster. Or, Owens has turned into a .370 OBP player, which is, well, Owens could well put up a .350 OBP next year, he put up a .340 obp in his 2nd callup, in sort of an average year cabrera winds up around .320.

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Jan 4, 2008 -> 07:03 PM) LOL, strange that he's still here and Ryan isn't. Anderson has less trade value.

QUOTE(jackie hayes @ Jan 4, 2008 -> 06:16 PM) I thought so. I do not think it means what you think it means. That's not Dontrelle's park-adjusted era that you're citing, that's the park-adjusted era for a league average pitcher (lgERA). It's used to provide a reference to compare a pitcher to. So an average pitcher throwing in the same parks would have an era of 4.17. Willis had an era of 3.78, or an era+ of 110 -- about 10% better than a league-average pitcher. I don't think you've got those exaclty right either, not if you're talking about last year at least. There's no way that Willis had anything close to an ERA above the league average last year.

QUOTE(Gregory Pratt @ Jan 4, 2008 -> 06:13 PM) I know Beane is a popular target at SoxTalk, but come on -- nobody has anything nice to say about him, or in defense? Keith? Nobody? I think Beane's a fine GM and does a very solid job with what he has to work with salary wise. I also think the fact that he's going after all of the White Sox minor leaguers says something valuable, which, combined with all of the "KW sucks" threads this year, is why I keep bringing that up.

QUOTE(SoxFan1 @ Jan 4, 2008 -> 04:33 PM) Wow. If it was DLS/Gio/Sweeney for Sizemore people would party in the streets in joy. But at the same time, he offers more speed and a bit better defense. And he's sexier.

QUOTE(Tony82087 @ Jan 4, 2008 -> 04:26 PM) It really doesn't have to be very complicated. In 2007, Swish lost his "protection"(wants for condom joke) in Frank, and was replaced by as you said a broken down Chavez, and a very streaky Jack Cust. There weren't many bats in the Oakland lineup that pitchers wanted to stay away from. Lets just say Swish bats 2nd(which I don't think is going to happen), having Thome-Kong-Dye behind him is going to help his numbers a lot more than Chavez-Cust-Ellis/Johnson? would have. Oh, I'm not saying it won't help, I think it'll be a great punch for us. But I was just looking at whether or not we could say that Chavez hit behind him a lot last year, and it kinda looks like the answer would be no, especially later in the year.

QUOTE(GreatScott82 @ Jan 4, 2008 -> 04:08 PM) Swisher was joking around saying that he will have to hop on that treadmill every day to get his cardio refreshed if he is going to be the every day CF. I really think he'll play LF. I'm kind of hoping Owens does well in spring training so he can be the every day CF/ leadoff man. The only other guy out there that KW could possibly get is Crisp to leadoff.. If Owens had 30+ SBs in the limited amount of time he had last year i think he can be a nice suprise in 2008 if given the chance for a full season. I wouldnt be upset if we get Crisp also... Thankfully, the White Sox have neither any place to play Coco Crisp for the next several years nor do they have anything of value to trade for him.

QUOTE(juddling @ Jan 4, 2008 -> 04:06 PM) IIRC Swish did most of his batting in the 2 hole which would put him right ahead of E. Chavez who didn't have a great year last year (killed a fantasy team of mine) and because of that he said he wasn't seeing alot of 2-0 fastballs that he hit out the year before. Probably never know if that is the real reason or not but it sounds plausible to me. Well, there's a little bit we can look at to check that. Swisher hit 2nd 190 times last year, hit 3rd 287 times, and had a smattering in other spots. OPS 859 out of the 2 spot and 811 out of the 3 spot. Chavez hit 3rd 118 times last year, so he wasn't there as often, and he hit 4th 87 times. Didn't put up good numbers in either spot, but wasn't really in either of them that much, so it's hard to draw any conclusions from that. It is probably worth saying that the A's simply didn't have anyone else in their lineup other than Jack Cust giving them decent power numbers, and it looks like Cust filled in the 3 and 4 spots pretty well later in the season.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 4, 2008 -> 03:27 PM) Some folks feel that OBP is king when it comes to leadoff hitting. Depends on your perspective. Swisher provides power, but this lineup is already pretty well powered up in the middle. Since everyone else is doing it, here would be my lineup... Cabrera, SS Swisher, CF Thome, DH Konerko, 1B Dye, RF Pierzynski, C Fields, 3B Quentin, LF Richar, 2B The one thing I want to see this year is OBP in front of Thome and Konerko. That was the biggest thing missing the last 2 years, I'd say, with Podsednik struggling, Erstad not being good, Iguchi struggling, and Fields not exactly being an OBP machine. That's why I was big on Owens getting that .350 OBP when I thought he was the starter, because lower htan that and it would really hurt with this lineup. If you stick Cabrera and Swisher up there, you've almost guaranteed yourself an OBP improvement. I'm still a fan of that streak Cabrera had in the first part of the 06 season where he was on base in 61 consecutive games, and that wasn't evne in his best season.

QUOTE(BearSox @ Jan 4, 2008 -> 03:27 PM) someone remind me... why would we want either Colon or Garcia? So we can waste a couple million on over the hill bums who will provide nothing except maybe some L's? Because we're simply too scared to trust the guys we have and our ability to get something out of them, so we're willing to throw money around to fix that problem, it seems. I think it's a poor idea too, but there's this big aversion to Danks or Floyd or Contreras being counted on right now. Some of that is understandable, some of it's a bit excessive in my book.