Balta1701

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Sep 12, 2007 -> 09:05 AM) I'd probably take Jerry Owens over Juan Pierre considering how much is left on that HUGE deal he just signed and the fact that it would take some sort of talent to acquire him. f*** that, Pierre's a mediocre ballplayer with a f***ing 33 ISOd which is quite possibly the worst of any leadoff hitter in baseball. Would you do Pierre for Contreras straight up? You'd be taking on salary for 1 year I believe.

QUOTE(Gregory Pratt @ Sep 12, 2007 -> 08:38 AM) Kind of funny if we traded for Pierre instead of Furcal. Might not be the worst idea in the world honestly...but I'd want them including some $$$ considering how Pierre's coming off a down season (or simply take Contreras). If they threw in some money, I might tolerate that. Of course, we'd still have to find a SS, but we wouldn't need a leadoff hitting SS.

QUOTE(Dick Allen @ Sep 12, 2007 -> 05:08 AM) Juan Uribe's 31 walks places him 4th on the team in that category. It is not Walker's fault the offense blows, it is definitely KW's as he apparently didn't consider the importance of being on base until recently. Uribe has the 3rd most plate appearances on the team, in case you were interested. And there's a big dropoff after the top 5. Name Games played plate appearances Paul Konerko 136 569 Jermaine Dye 123 497 Juan Uribe 133 484 A.J. Pierzynski 125 458 Jim Thome 115 470 Tadahito Iguchi (37 Phi) 90 371 Josh Fields 85 344 Jerry Owens 78 320 Darin Erstad 78 307 Rob Mackowiak (26 SD) 85 260 Scott Podsednik 51 184

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Sep 12, 2007 -> 08:14 AM) Joe Crede atleast showed some potential in AAA, putting up a .930 OPS his second year in AAA. Past rookie ball, Ryan Sweeney has cracked an .800 OPS one time, and that was last year at Charlotte. Even the infamous Brian Anderson even put up a .830 OPS at AAA before proving he absolutely blew chunks. It might also be worth noting that Anderson put up those AAA numbers when he was 23. Sweeney was 21 last year when he cracked that .800 OPS. And unfortunately, this season has been one of those nasty ones for him, where he's both struggled with a lot of injuries and was promoted early due to injuries above him, thus robbing him of consistent playing time to some extent.

QUOTE(BigSqwert @ Sep 11, 2007 -> 02:21 PM) This makes almost no sense. What was the purpose of this? Does anyone know if there's a dollar value attached to this yet, i.e. that we're getting Ozzie @ a discount by locking him up earlier during a losing season? It's also possible that we're trying to make a statement of stability in the organization, which on occasion is appealing to some FA's and players on our own team. Maybe. Either way, I probably would have waited until next year.

Oh great...the legend of Paul Byrd...the only man to even slow down the White Sox in the playoffs in 05...

"The finger thing means the taxes!"

QUOTE(Dick Allen @ Sep 11, 2007 -> 11:45 AM) Big difference in pitching in the minors and majors. Also you've penciled Gavin Floyd for 175 innings next season. Please don't back off of it. I think Gavin Floyd could easily throw 175 innings next year. In 2005 he threw 165, in 2006 he threw 170. He's backed off of that a bit this year because the Sox didn't give him regular work. The question is not whether or not his body will be able to eat the innings. I think he can certainly do that. The question is...how good will the innings be. He could probably throw 200+ innings next year if we gave him a full season in the bigs. But the question is...will we want him to.

BMac back on the mound for the Rangers tonight.

QUOTE(Dick Allen @ Sep 11, 2007 -> 11:40 AM) They have no one in the minors you can expect to come in next year and pitch 175 innings, and I am ;the biggest Gio Gonzalez fan on this board. Danks ran out of gas after about 90 innings this season. Perhaps next year he will last longer, but I doubt he can double it. If Garland or Vazquez go or even Contreras that will be someone the last couple of years 200 innings were counted on. I think contreras is still a mess right now as is Danks as he is 0-7 with a 6.80 ERA his last 8 starts. Garland has not be very good his last 10 starts or so overall, and I think he will be gone so a rookie is going to fill in unless someone is acquired. That could be 60% of the rotation which is coming into 2008 ugly. Gavin Floyd certainly seems like he could htrow 175+ innings next year. Lance Broadway threw 155 this year in the minors and is tacking on more in the majors. Egbert threw 160 innings last year and 155 this year. Haeger threw 150 this year and 180 last year between the minors and majors. Phillips threw 173 this year and is still going. Gio has thrown 150 each of the last 2 years. If all you're asking about is innings eaters...on that we're loaded, which was the original question. The secondary question is...which ones of these guys can step up and be above average big league pitcher sin the next few years? That's the question we still have to answer. It could well be none of them...but at least we have a boatload of candidates.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 11, 2007 -> 10:03 AM) realer? That's the whole point. There is no "real" in assessing talent, other than the results of the players' actions. No one has a "realer" assessment than anyone else - they have a different one. And because baseball is so dynamic, and because some players take so long to develop, some of us are willing to give certain younger players a chance to show what they can do (especially when the season is basically a loss anyway). Others, apparently, would rather make a judgement once about a player early in their development, and insist on the idea that no player ever changes or improves. The problem of course is that there will be times that both of those groups will be 100% correct. There will be many, many, many players who simply don't ever develop into what they originally were thought to be. That's why even 1st round picks have such a high failure rate. No matter what comparison anyone tries to come up with...it's going to be right sometimes and wrong other times. If this game were easy to figure out, then the Yankees would win the series every year. So, all I see that teams can do is try to set themselves up as well as humanly possible. We can't simply go out and spend $150 million next offseason and add in ARod, Hunter, Linebrink, and trade for Johan, no matter how much we want. So we sort of have to pick and choose which holes we're going to try to fill with the money we have, and we're going to just have to hope for the best from our other guys...just as almost every team in baseball must do.

QUOTE(29andPoplar @ Sep 11, 2007 -> 09:59 AM) Who is to say he isn't being given a shot because he will be available in trade this winter? Just saying. There are probably several lower level teams who have the time and patience to carry Gavin Floyd on their roster, teams who have other assets which would appeal to the White Sox. I will raise my hand and be the one to say that Floyd is not being given a shot as trade-bait. I will give a couple reasons for this. First and foremost...the entire reason for acquiring a Gavin Floyd right now would be that you hope he's on the verge of turning it around...and therefore you can get him at a much lower price than his performance would justify. You hope he's a bargain. In other words, you think you can get him for maybe the same sort of price the Sox got for Iguchi or something like that. No team right now is going to give up a high quality player that the White Sox would want for Gavin Floyd alone. And second...there is a non-trivial chance that Floyd's price will drop precipitously next spring...because he is out of options. If he does not make the White Sox 25 man roster, or seems like he won't, the Sox will be left with the choice of dumping him onto whatever team will give us ANYTHING for him or letting him walk via the waiver wire. In other words, no reasonable team will give up anything of value for him right now because they'd expect that if the Sox weren't putting him in their short term plans, the price for him will drop evne more in the near future.

QUOTE(Gene Honda Civic @ Sep 10, 2007 -> 08:16 PM) If that's the case, it has to be Buehrle, Vazquez, and the best three of Gio/Danks/Floyd/Egbert after the break... Heck, if the Sox continue to play poorly next season, which is a very good bet right now. You could see Fautino getting starts down the stretch. (He's going to be a fast riser) On that I'll agree. And I might even throw Broadway and Haeger into that pot as well. If you start the season with Contreras, FLoyd, and Danks all in the rotation, and a couple of them wind up as disasters...then after about 2 months, 1 month at the earliest if things are just horrendous, you find some way to replace whoever it is that is dying out there with whoever's performing at AAA.

QUOTE(Dick Allen @ Sep 10, 2007 -> 08:04 PM) The White Sox would be in the hunt for the #1 pick again with that rotation. Danks as a #3 is scary. He couldn't finish out this season. Floyd blows. The others would be rookies who most likely struggle. That's 3 out of 5 that are below average and really counting on Vazquez as a #2 guy would be very scary. Pitching wins. I really don't think you can say without a doubt Danks is an above average #5 starter. Making him #3 isn't potential disaster, its pretty close to guaranteed disaster. Based on their performances this year, I think many people here would much rather see Danks in the #3 role next year than Contreras...but I really don't think Jose is moveable.

QUOTE(CWSGuy406 @ Sep 10, 2007 -> 07:31 PM) With a handful of arms that we aren't quite sure about, I think my plan for the offseason has changed a bit. I now want both Garland and Contreras traded, and two of Floyd/Haeger/Egbert/Gonzalez to take over the fourth and fifth spots. I understand the potential for disaster is there, especially since you're moving an above average #5 starter in Danks into a spot where he becomes below average (#3), but the 2008 season is going to be a gamble anyways. Trade Garland and Contreras for a combination of your 2008 SS and prospects, sign one of those CFers (Bradley, Jones, Cameron, Rowand/Hunter in that order), let Crede take third, put Fields in left and hope to hell that you can mash the crap out of teams (and that your bullpen bounces back big time). Unfortunately, I still think it's going to be impossible to trade Jose without the Sox picking up at least 1/3 of his contract, which is probably just a silly thing to do, given that we'd be still getting virtually nothing back. I think it's highly, highly likely that our starting 5 to open next year is Buehrle, Vazquez, Contreras, Danks, Floyd.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Sep 10, 2007 -> 01:31 PM) Amazing that they would donate to a candidate they despised I am more and more against public financing of campaigns. This isn't a Dem or Gop problem, it is a citizen problem. I am sitting here wondering at what level does a donor need careful checking, $1,000? $100,000? $10,000,000? Unreal. We know candidates hate this sort of negative publicity, but it seems clean and not so clean candidates get caught. How exactly does another donor being caught doing something underhanded make you more against public campaign financing? I would think that seeing some guys get caught would leave you wondering how many others weren't caught, and I'd think that's an argument in favor of taking the "legalized bribery" aspect out of the system.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Sep 10, 2007 -> 12:20 PM) Leave it to the bloggers to provide a little more information on this... http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/drilling-for-justice.htm Thanks. I'm fairly surprised it's actually out there, but impressed that someone found it.

The NFL has confiscated a camera from the Patriots sideline and may be investigating the Pats for stealing signals from the Jets.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 10, 2007 -> 11:17 AM) That's kind of what I was thinking. I'd sure rather see Hunter/Rowand out there patrolling CF, if the money is right. but if its not, or if it means spending $10M on a Juan Pierre, I'd much rather stick with Owens. IMO, the money will simply not be right. The only way I think that the money for either of those 2 would make sense is if we could deal Garland and pick up a young SS like Hu, Escobar, or Aybar. But then again, I still say priority #1 is a new SS.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Sep 10, 2007 -> 11:04 AM) What do y'all think of the timing of these? Well, there's clearly a leak that has sprung within some office investigating that NY steroid distributor. It's only a couple months after that guy in the Mets clubhouse, who seemed to be connected to all of this, was arrested, and these all seem to be stemming from that group...so I guess it's not all that surprising to me that these all are hitting at once.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 10, 2007 -> 11:01 AM) Like I said, I certainly prefer other players to Owens. But when I say "OK", I am saying I think Owens can get on base at a .330-.350 clip, which is only slightly higher than what he is doing since his July callup (which is .327). Add to that some significant speed and basestealing talent, and good defense in CF (other than a sub-standard arm), and if he is your Plan C or D, that ain't too bad. Let's just hope we don't get to Plan D. Just to add ot the discussion, I piled up all of the cumulative OBP's this year by people with at least 250 at bats in the leadoff spot. If Jerry Owens could put up a .350 OBP for a full season, with his speed, that would put him IMO well into the group of "Better leadoff hitters" in the league. He'd be in the upper half of OBP, and his speed would be making up for some of the lack of slugging. But of course...that is a big if. But then again...if the other options are things like they would have been last year...spending $10 million a season on a Dave Roberts or on a Juan Pierre (.323 OBP this year)...you can guess which option I think would be the bigger gamble.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Sep 10, 2007 -> 10:39 AM) Good point, we'd have to look and see if they were dumping or they would have made those trades as a normal part of their business. Alex Cintron for Jeff Bajenaru. I think we were all pretty thrilled with that one. Troy Glaus for Orlando Hudson and Miguel Batista.

Jerry Owens' line so far in Sept: .313 .389 .344 .733, 2/4 SB's.

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Sep 9, 2007 -> 06:38 PM) you're really reaching for a conspiracy or scandal on this one. No, I just think it's a fairly embarassing slipup if he's totally pulling things that random out of his arse, and I haven't been able to thus far find anything on the Google suggesting anything other than "he totally made it up".

So, the issue here is the process of conversion of sunlight to other forms of energy. Overall, earth is actually roughly in balance between energy coming in and energy stored + energy going out. Roughly speaking, a fixed amount of energy comes to the earth with time from the sun. There are other inputs also (i.e. below us) but let's neglect those for now. If we remove the atmosphere from the earth, make the earth nothing but a rock...then the process is fairly simple. Sunlight comes in to the planet...the planet itself then absorbs a certain percentage of this light due to the absorbance of the rocks on the surface...i.e. due to their color. We call this effect the albedo of the planet; if a planet is totally ice, it has a high albedo, because ice is colorless and reflects a ton of light, while a rocky planet has a low albedo...and consequently 2 planets the same size and same distance from the sun will have different temperatures if they have different planetary albedoes. Now...the planet has taken in energy. The interesting thing is...the planet then begins to lose this energy to space through radiation. However...it does something different than the sun. The sun is so hot that it releases its energy as fairly high energy light; UV radiation and visible light. A very cold object releases its radiation as low energy infrared light. If you looked at a planet that was at 200k (73 degrees C below zero) in the infrared, you would be able to still find a wavelength where the planet was emitting light. Our eyes aren't tuned to these wavelengths though, so we can't see the energy that is being emitted by the or by other planets; we can only see the energy that is in the visible range due to sunlight being reflected around. So in other words, sunlight comes in at one wavelength...some of it actually is reflected back (that's why you can see the earth from space; light is bounced back. Same reason you can see the moon). Some of the light is absorbed, and is radiated out as infrared energy. Without an atmosphere...the amount of radiation coming in and being absorbed would entirely determine the temperature of the planet; it's actually a fairly easy calculation if you know the albedo. That's how we figure out the temperature at places like Pluto; we can measure the light being reflected back, we therefore know the albedo, and can calculate what the surface temp actually is. The global warming and ozone hole details of this question are the complexities. Now, we're going to take the planet and wrap an atmosphere around it. Let's just allow it to have nitrogen and water in the atmosphere for now for simplicity. These 2 molecules are important...in that they can absorb light in the infrared and turn it into heat energy; if a photon comes in at an appropriate energy, it will be absorbed by these molecules and they will begin to either rotate or vibrate, and motion of atoms is essentially what we're measuring when we measure the temperature of something. Take as a given that the planet needs to stay roughly in balance between energy going out and energy coming in from the sun. With no atmosphere, the planet can radiate that energy at any wavelength it wants. But if you stick water in there...the water will prevent emission at certain wavelengths because it will absorb the light trying to leave at those wavelengths and turn it back into heat. In other words, you wrap a planet in an atmosphere containing water...it will warm up because more energy will be staying inside. But, this process doesn't happen forever; the earth isn't 60 million degrees K. Water does not absorb light at every wavelength; its only can absorb light at certain wavelengths. Therefore, by just adding water into the atmosphere, you will warm the planet up. But when the planet warms, the wavelength of IR light it emits at shifts to a higher energy, as changing the energy of light changes the wavelength. Eventually, the planet will find a happy place where it can emit the incoming energy in the form of IR light at a wavelength where the water doesn't absorb the emitted photons. This is the general concept of the greenhouse effect; by having water in the atmosphere, the surface is warmed until it emits its energy at a wavelength where the water isn't in the way. Where do other greenhouse gases, like CO2 and methane fit into this? They fill exactly the same role as water; when you start sticking them into the atmosphere, they absorb light that the planet is trying to release and turn it back into heat. The reason why they're important now though is that they do not absorb at the same wavelengths as water. So, if you stick both water and CO2 into an atmosphere, you wind up forcing the planet to heat up even more because it has to find a place where it can emit its energy without it being reabsorbed in the atmosphere. And since the amount of light absorbed is proportional to the concentration of light and the thickness of the layer (Beer's law), the more CO2, methane, or water you stick into the atmosphere, the more radiated energy is going to be reabsorbed, and the hotter the planet is going to need to be on average in order to dissipate the incoming energy from the sun. The ozone hole is actually an unrelated issue. Ozone is to the best of my knowledge not a major greenhouse gas...but it does do one useful thing; it absorbs UV light. UV light is a bad thing...in that it damages cellular tissue. From a warming perspective, with or without that layer, the energy from the sun would still be converted into temperature, so that's not the biggest forcing. But from a biological perspective, I really care about having that layer up there, because the less UV hitting my skin, the lower my chances of getting a sunburn/cancer are.