Balta1701

QUOTE(GoSox05 @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 11:31 AM) If the Sox were to sign Rowand. That would fill all the spots. Who would lead off? Has Cabrera ever been a lead off guy before? According to Baseball-Reference, Cabrera has 391 career plate appearances as a leadoff hitter. His numbers: .245 .283 .394 .677 In the last 4 years, he has hit leadoff only 25 times.

QUOTE(WCSox @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 11:30 AM) So, is there any reason why Jones accepted a paltry two-year deal? No one was giving him a long term deal worth more than $50-$60 million. In his estimation, with salary inflation, he could earn that in probably 3-4 years if he has 2 decent years on this contract. He hits FA again at an age younger than ARod was when he scored 10/$300 from the Yankees.

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 11:33 AM) For what it's worth - and that's a lot considering their ages - Felix Pie's career minor league OPS is 100 points higher than Owens'. That's it?!?!?!

The question is...is he expecting to be a starter next year? As a SS we don't really have room for 1 in 08, we have 2 right now. But if he's more expecting to follow the Escobar/Morales path of spending a year in the minors, we could have a slot for that.

QUOTE(bschmaranz @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 11:13 AM) As long as Pedro Gomez does reports on Bonds from The Cell every five minutes on ESPN, I'm down! I might have to surround the Cell with hidden "Pedro Gomez traps" if that ever happened.

QUOTE(Controlled Chaos @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 10:11 AM) Can anyone with more statistical savy than myself, compare Rowand to Hunter over the past 5 years. I thought I saw something like this on Chicago Tribune Live...and the stats were pretty comparable?? I went back to 2002 with that, avoiding Rowand's true rookie year. During that time, Jones had 3448 at bats, Rowand had 2541, so for a fair projection Rowand has had only 75% of the AB's that Jones has had. Jones's Numbers followed by Rowands: HR 89/218 RBI: 652/327 BB: 423/146 K's: 477/784 These numbers are yearly averages, not weighted by # of at bats because frankly I'm too lazy?: Average: .258/.282 OBP: .345/.335 OPS: .851/.791 Rowand gets more hits than Jones. However, Rowand walks much less, even accounting for the fewer AB's. Jones does K more, but for the same number of AB's Rowand would come up with probably 20 fewer k's per season on average. Jones takes more walks, and in terms of OBP, Jones takes more than enough walks for his OBP to be higher than Rowand's despite the 30+ points of batting average. And slugging is no contest: Jones homers at 2x the rate of Rowand, drives in 50% more runs/year, and puts up similar numbers of doubles.

QUOTE(iamshack @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 09:44 AM) While I agree that he shouldn't have gone off on the media, much as he shouldn't have said infamously in the past "stay out of White Sox business," he's dealing with a fanbase, which, for the most part, is not a well-informed one. Anyone who listens to sports talk-radio, or reads the columns in Chicago newspapers can attest to the fact that our fanbase is primarily fed information which was far more in-vogue 15 years ago. It appears the newer philosophies and current intelligent ways of thinking in the industry have yet to reach the Chicago media- and therefore- the majority of the fans have yet to become learned in that fashion. Thus, Kenny is trying to appease the masses with a plan which, for the most part, simply doesn't understand the current baseball climate or the complexities of the current marketplace. I understand his frustration on that level. Needless to say, the best course of action would be to keep his mouth shut more often and go about his business without worrying about what the media thinks or the fans think. Ultimately, this fanbase responds well to results. How he goes about achieving those results, no one really cares. But, the problem is, there's a real catch-22 built in there. Right now, KW's best option out of the mess that has come out of our farm system, specifically the McCullough/Broadway picks and the self-implosion of Anderson and Sweeney, is patience, on every level. If a system were put in place immediately to fix this, it would do a number of things. One, spend more on the draft obviously (we'll see). Two, spend more overseas (we've seen hints of this). Three, overhaul the scouting system (we've certainly seen this, the question will be the results). Four, and this one to me is the most important; efforts at the top level to find bargains and turn them into something useful. 2 years ago, we were actually able to win a World Series in no small part because we wound up so good at the 4th of those on my list. We found a metric ton of bargains and it just happened to work. Now, we're making efforts to find some more of those guys. We snuck Owens into the lineup. We picked up Richar, who was blocked by Orlando Hudson. We grabbed Quentin who was down on his luck due to an injury. We grabbed Floyd and Gio off of down years when their value was at a minimum. We tried to make a few trades, but found that we just weren't getting the value we wanted back in no small part because of poor performance, so we resigned people. With the top levels of the system the way they are, the best, fastest way out involves a ton of patience. There are an awful lot of high risk guys for the Sox in the upper levels right now. Contreras, Owens, Richar, Floyd, Danks, Gio, Crede, Fields, Quentin, Anderson, Sweeney, and if you toss in the other veterans you can include guys like Dye and Thome. If somehow, every one of them performed like they could, we'd have another world series team on our hands. But the odds are strongly against that. At least several of these guys are likely to continue their implosions. The way to fix this though is to realize that some of them won't. Some of these guys will come out and have good seasons. And those guys will suddenly have a ton more value on the trade market. If we don't come out smoking hot at the beginning of the year, the odds are that some of our guys will still perform. It might be Contreras, Owens, Floyd, whatever. The ideal way to build this thing back up quickly is to get a few guys that you pick up at reduced prices and either develop them into guys you can hold onto at reasonable prices for 10 years (Quentin) or spin them off if their value goes back up (Dye, Contreras). It's not going to be a fast process, because a lot of these guys are likely to fail just by random chance. But if a few of them get hot, you can salvage this thing pretty quick with a couple intelligent moves. The big problem though is...how many people here would tolerate KW being around for a full rebuilding? People were calling for his job last year. If it takes 2-3 years of losing to totally restock this thing and come in absolutely loaded, who is going to tolerate that? KW is in a position where the best thing for himself is not necessarily the best thing for the franchise. It is in this that hopefully JR's loyalty helps, in that it might give him the time to actually rebuild. But he's sort of set up to fail now, because if he doesn't rebuild this thing fast, then he loses his job, but if he tries to rebuild this thing fast, one single slip-up like giving the wrong deal to a FA who blows up costs him his job.

So, it appears that the Administration is ready to announce a voluntary agreement with a lot of the banks/mortgage lenders out there to try to do something about the whole mortgage reset issue, and at least according to this Bloomberg piece it seems like something of a bipartisan agreement. Personally though, I think from my understanding of what got us into this mess, the deal winds up not being of much use. The idea is; for a specific group of mortgage-holders, the reset in their loan, which for a lot of people is still coming and which would push the loan to much higher pay rates, is delayed 5 years. While this sounds like a good idea just in that it would give people who can't afford the mortgages they took out a chance to at least delay and spread out the impact, the devil appears to be in the details. Specifically: According to other sources, this breaks down thusly: If you go through all of those, that seems to me to be quite a small group of people who would actaully qualify. Especially given the last one; a great number of these ARM's were taken out on homes that people were buying simply for speculation purposes, expecting the value to go up and thus turn a profit on the transaction. But if the value went down, that prevents it from doing anything. And an awful lot of the loans taken out in the last 2 years are already late as it is. I think I'm fairly torn on this whole government intervention issue here. On one hand, the fact is if the government does nothing, the recession due to this mess is going to be longer and deeper and not spread out at all. On the other hand, the more the government does, the more it rewards people who either took out loans foolishly or rewards the people who sold and then financially buried the risk in these loans, and thus winds up removing the sting that we'd hope would prevent this same thing from happening 8 years down the road once the next "market that will always go up!" is found.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 08:17 AM) Also, a new NH poll is out (Again, first non-Zogby poll of December). It shows Clinton's lead, once in the high teens in October, as now being just 6 points. Details... Clinton: 35% Obama: 29% Edwards: 17% Richardson: 10% NH Showed something like a 12-13 point pro-Kerry swing after Kerry's Iowa win, for reference.

QUOTE(whitesoxfan99 @ Dec 5, 2007 -> 07:50 PM) So I missed the game tonight and saw Hinrich only played 16 minutes. Did he get hurt or benched for his crappy play? Hinrich continues to have 2 of his fingers taped together for some reason I don't know if we've been told about, and at least the Radio guys did say that they appeared to be bothering him.

QUOTE(BlackBetsy @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 06:42 AM) Wow. I didn't think there could be a worse deal than the Torii Hunter deal. Then some dumbass GM makes a worse deal. Now some other dumbass GM is going to give Rowand 6 years 100 million or something stupider. I hope it's not Kenny. Fuku Fuku Fuku. Anything that is only 2 years long is not a worse deal. Even if he blows up and hits .220 again, what are the Dodgers on the hook for, 1 more year?

F***.

QUOTE(klaus kinski @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 08:48 AM) Why couldnt he play 2b and lead off? Because even last year, he was a damn streaky hitter, and not a great one at that. For example, his pre/post all star splits: .342 .419 .441 .860 .214 .294 .354 .648 His L/R splits: .191 .291 .234 .525 .283 .358 .418 .776 He had a great first half and a terrible 2nd half. He put up an OBP of .204 in September (You read that right, OBP). He can't hit lefties at all. He's just not a reliable, consistent leadoff man. He is a backup, and that's what all of his career numbers say. He's a quality backup, but he doesn't put up the numbers to be a consistent Major League starter.

QUOTE(BaseballNick @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 08:26 AM) Haha! "We wear caps and sleeves at this level, son!" "I can't. My head and arms have grown so big that no man made fabric can fit around them without tearing."

If he happened to hit right handed, he'd be a perfect addition. Unfortunately, as things currently stand, the CF we might want him to back up also happens to be a speedy left handed hitter. Middle Infield option, ok, that works, esp. if we could move Uribe. But we would still want someone else who can play CF.

In other words, Rowand is worth $14 million a year not because we can count on his bat, but because he's a grinder.

QUOTE(fathom @ Dec 5, 2007 -> 09:26 PM) If the Cubs can get Roberts without giving up Hill or Pie, it's a great move for them. If they can, then the Orioles are even dumber than I imagined. And an offer of Gio straight up should beat that.

LOL @ that offer. That's a joke. They may as well throw in Prior.

QUOTE(DonnyDevito @ Dec 5, 2007 -> 09:16 PM) of course, that's all in the event that we add Rowand. If we don't then I don't see why we netted a 33 year old SS. you add one of those to compete now, not for the future. Why do I constantly feel like the only one who remembers how many times Mr. Rowand stopped the lineup from turning over when he was hitting .270 and putting up a .320 OBP in 2005 and 2006? I swear, if Uribe got hot enough for a year to hit .320 and put up the kind of numbers we all dream he could, it seems like 95% of the people on this site would suddenly forget the years upon years of mediocrity and want to throw 5/$75 at him.

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Dec 5, 2007 -> 08:49 PM) but doesnt he look good in a White Sox uniform? Put a few vertical white stripes on one of our uniforms, and it might work.

QUOTE(scenario @ Dec 5, 2007 -> 08:35 PM) A guy with that talent level does not sit out unless he is physically unable to play. Just watch.

Urge to kill...rising...

QUOTE(spiderman @ Dec 5, 2007 -> 08:08 PM) I don't disagree with anything you're saying, but I just think Williams considers Konerko to be a steadying rock for the club. That did us a lot of good last year. I agree with what he's saying also, I just don't think that there's any team out there that's going to give us the return we'd want for trading a guy like Konerko.

QUOTE(iamshack @ Dec 5, 2007 -> 07:49 PM) Perhaps not. But I think you are underestimating the value of Konerko and overestimating the value of Kotchman. That may well be the case, even considering the contracts. The problem is...the Angels don't always go for "fair value" when they're trading their young guys. They would have made more moves with them by now if they had, because lots of teams have salivated over their guys for 3 years now. Just because Konerko's value in our eyes may equal Kotchman and E. Santana doesn't mean the Angels would make that deal.

QUOTE(bschmaranz @ Dec 5, 2007 -> 07:50 PM) Steve Phillips blog says the Orioles would receive Rich Hill and Sean Marshall from the Cubs.... um, okay. That makes a little more sense than the offer the Tribune floated. The O's might well demand Hill, Marshall, and that Gallagher guy.