Balta1701

QUOTE(Dick Allen @ Jul 26, 2007 -> 08:28 PM) Its funny we didn't hear how mentally fragile Damaso Marte was until Ozzie hit town. I will go to my grave thinking Ozzie gets way too much credit for Garland's turnaround. Garland was basically the same pitcher even a little worse his first year with Ozzie. And he's averaged a little less than 1 more inning per start since Ozzie took over. He cut his walk rate down. If Ozzie is the reason for that, what's the deal with the current bullpen. I think managers and coaches get way too much blame and credit. Just think, if Ozzie bailed at the end of last season, and a new guy was brought it, and the White Sox had the same record as they do now, we would be constantly told how that was proof positive how great and important Ozzie was, that the disaster that this current team is would never occur under Ozzie's watch. Damaso Marte was here for what, 1 year before Ozzie hit town?

QUOTE(beck72 @ Jul 26, 2007 -> 06:37 PM) I like the fact the sox are looking at guys who are performing in the minors--be it starters or relievers-- and trying to see if they can get major league hitters out in the bullpen. First Haeger. Then Ehren. Now Floyd. The sox should try Broadway at some point as well. Floyd needs to have some success in the bigs. The bullpen is the best spot as the sox can put him in the right situations. IMO, it's a lil' bit early for Broadway to come up to the show...it seems to me like he's still working on getting everything together with his pitches. His numbers this season suggest he's been improving, people have said his 2 seamer is getting better each start, and his k rate is improving similarly. I'd say let him get comfortable with everything for another month or two at least, see where he is then, and then consider what we can do with him this offseason. Unfortunately, we sort of have way too many "almost ready for the big leagues" pitchers for currently 0 open rotation spots next year, and a couple of them are out of options (Floyd, Phillips). Heath is probably walking unless he's dealt this offseason, and it'd be a tough pill for KW to swallow to have to let Floyd walk to give a starting spot to Broadway next season.

QUOTE(Flash Tizzle @ Jul 26, 2007 -> 05:23 PM) Does anyone realistically believe this team can improve 12+ games over this season with limited upgrades consisting of a tweaked bullpen and Type B Free agents recovering from injury and/or a poor season? I certainly can't give you a guarantee, but I can make the argument as to why we could. First and foremost, bullpen performances are highly variable, and we all know that. Between the guys we do already have, we're at least starting from a position of a lot of talent. Aardsma, MMac, Jenks, Thornton, Logan, and change give us a base of talent that can be built upon. Did anyone honestly look at these guys this season and think they'd be THIS bad? It's truly hard for me to fathom how they've failed this badly. I'm honestly a little bit worried we'll dump Aardsma or MMac or someone like that for chump change this offseason and then they'll find whatever it is they lost this season, because it just seems that's how variable bullpen performances are. Secondly, there is plenty of reason to think our starting pitching could be equal to this season or better next season. Danks should be quite a bit better in year 2. Buehrle is there. Garland and Vazquez are either around or traded, but both of them have been performing quite well this year overall, with a few blips. And it's pretty hard to believe that Contreras/Floyd/Haeger/Gio/Broadway will be any worse than Jose has been this year. And third, offensively...Several of our guys started off with career low performances. Konerko was terrible to start the year. 3rd base was an absolute disaster. SS was an absolute disaster. 2nd Base was an absolute disaster. C was pretty poor. And the OF was just terrible. Aside from Thome, NO one had a good start to the season. Even if all we do is plug in Owens, if he performs, we'll be better off than with the Prancerstad combo. Richar could well be average at 2nd base or better. Fields is showing strong promise. Crede could well come back healthy at the beginning of next year and actually hit. AJ and Paulie should be a lot better next year, just by %ages evening out. And it's really hard for anything to be worse than the Pods, Erstad, Dye OF we put together to start this season. If we fix the bullpen, I think just on %ages, some of the guys will have better seasons next year, especially if we get Richar and Sweeney up here ASAP and keep Owens in the lineup to try to get rookie struggles out of the way a bit.

QUOTE(michelangelosmonkey @ Jul 26, 2007 -> 06:13 PM) I think we get too emotional over this. Our only chance is a Liriano-esque trade? Why do we refuse to accept the fact that we still have the core of a World Series championship. In baseball sometimes a 90 win sort-of team wins 90, sometimes 100 and sometimes 80. There's an incredible amount of luck, injury, career-year, timing etc that goes into a turn around. It is NOT impossible that Contreas turns it around next year. Look at Glavine, Maddux, Smoltz who have had bad years followed by very good years. I mean we are only 12 month removed from the guy being the best pitcher in baseball. So we have a rotation of Buehrle, Garland, Vaz, Danks and Contreas...where Danks gets better and Contreas has a bounce back...anad Garland, Vaz and Buehrle are like they are this year. You cobble together enough offense ( remember the 2005 team was not very good offensively). Inject some fresh blood with good defense. I'm not saying it's going to happen...but I think anyone that thinks we have no chance in 2008 is also wrong. Well, the one issue with that is that a Danks, Garland, Vaz, Buehrle, and Contreras rotation is a $45 million rotation next year. The Sox have experimented with havign 50%+ of their payroll tied up in 4-5 guys before, and it looked a lot like the 2004 team. It has some very good guys, but also has some very big holes because it's filled with whatever can be found cheaply, and if one of those key big guys has a bad year or gets hurt, there's really nothing available to replace them.

QUOTE(Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 26, 2007 -> 02:03 PM) Who has control these days in the Fed Gov? Sure as hell isn't Congress. The Executive is now the king branch mainly because he is a reality star. The majority of the country thinks that he should be the one proposing legislation and that he should be the one getting things done. If you take away the EC there's no reason for this incredibly powerful individual to spend 2 seconds thinking about any rural area of the country. They don't have enough people to make a difference in a popular vote, so why focus on them? Focus on the major metro areas and you're set for election day. Farm subsidizes was just an example of an issue that a small percentage of the country deals with. But in terms of all the issues you could bring up that wind up being important to small states, things like farm subsidies, or immigration regulations, etc., all of that stuff gets hashed out in the budget debates in Congress. Yes, the President has the bully pulpit, and George W. has truly made it a king branch, but his power over the minute details that matter to folks in states like Iowa, Montana, etc. (pick your example) is not nearly as great. Day to day issues, like ethanol subsidies, drilling in one place or another, funds for highways, and on and on, that all gets hashed out by the deal makers in Congress and their lobbyist friends. The President has the ability to set the national priorities. He has the control of foreign policy, defense, and apparently, the ability to break the law at his discretion without any consequences. But he does not control the budget. He can propose legislation, but it's the guys in Congress who hash it out and make it work or not.

A team can still win with a bad contract. The Sox were paying Frank Thomas a good $10 mil in 05, and he only played like 3 weeks for us. 1 bad contract does not a team ruin. It's everything else around it that is the cause for concern.

QUOTE(Jimbo's Drinker @ Jul 26, 2007 -> 01:55 PM) what happened? Sac bunt by Fields, Miner throws the ball away.

QUOTE(BigSqwert @ Jul 26, 2007 -> 01:55 PM) So how did it end? I'm following on gameday. Sac bunt by Fields, throwing error by Miner. World Series all over again.

Joshua Fields Forever. What is it about our 3rd basemen and the 9th inning?

QUOTE(Jenks Heat @ Jul 26, 2007 -> 01:46 PM) Imagine what could have been had for he and Crede this past off season..... I have difficulty figuring out why any team would have wanted Joe with his back problems and with the knowledge that he was listening to Boras's doctors over those of the White Sox. That may well be why the rumored deal with the Halos involving Garcia, Figgins, and Santana didn't go through.

QUOTE(CanOfCorn @ Jul 26, 2007 -> 01:44 PM) So, the little bar at the bottom of ESPN's Gameday (I know, it sux) said that Dye's avg. with RISP this year, .196!!! .196!!!!!!! WTF!!!! He's only hitting .227 overall.

QUOTE(Controlled Chaos @ Jul 26, 2007 -> 01:40 PM) Bases loaded...0 outs...a shaky pitcher and we get 1 run. haha....It's just that kind of year At least we didn't need 2.

Come on AJ, I'll even take the GIDP here.

QUOTE(Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 26, 2007 -> 12:40 PM) IMO that's the exact opposite direction we should be heading in. Small states become unimportant if you do that. Candidates would simply forget about 10-12 states because the population isn't big enough. Their votes wouldn't matter. Why promise farm subsidies when you can promise New Yorkers energy credits. More people, more votes, more pull. The exact opposite intention of most of the Founding Fathers. And I'm an Illinois citizen first. This is where I live. This is where I work. The US just happens to surround me. You do realize that there's already been a major effort to take care of that issue, right? Specifically, the great compromise in the Constitution; small states getting equal representation in the Senate and larger states dominating the House? And the farm subsidy system as it stands now is an abject disaster, btw. For everyone who doesn't own a factory farm.

QUOTE(fathom @ Jul 26, 2007 -> 01:06 PM) I think Boston's the best team in the AL. Hawk keeps saying it's the Tigers, but then he talks about how the Sox could never be good this year because their bullpen has been bad. The Red Sox bullpen is amazing compared to the Tigers. Zumaya and Rodney will still be back before the playoffs hit. That's some heavy reinforcements

QUOTE(Greg The Bull Luzinski @ Jul 26, 2007 -> 01:05 PM) OT, are the Tigers the best team in the AL? In the NL, I don't think anybody will stop the Cubs now that they are rolling. ... there it hurts like hell, but I said it. The Cubs have played 6 games against winning teams in their last 30.

QUOTE(LosMediasBlancas @ Jul 26, 2007 -> 12:29 PM) Well, we can only go by what we know for sure. So far, what % of players have tested positive? I think Canseco claimed 75% of MLB was juicing. I'm pretty sure 75% of MLB has not tested positive, so was it an exaggeration? Well, we know that in, when was it, 2003, somewhere between 5 and 10% of MLB players tested positive anonymously with something like 6 months of warnings before the tests were going to be given. And we also have the HGH issue, where there's no test for it.

Post game show = canceled.

QUOTE(CanOfCorn @ Jul 26, 2007 -> 12:18 PM) 'Exactly, which means he'll make it through waivers and trade-able. And anyway, I think teams, as a rule, put most of their rosters through waivers just for flexibility's sake. If someone claims them, they pull 'em back. I know we had a long convo about this last year, so I could be wrong. You are correct, although there are different levels of waivers, most of them are put on revocable waivers, where if anyone claims a player, they can be pulled back. I believe I read somewhere that they put Buehrle on Waivers back in 05.

QUOTE(CanOfCorn @ Jul 26, 2007 -> 12:08 PM) Ummm...no he can't. I think he means Verlander.

Owens works a 9 pitch at bat before flying out. Don't like the out too much, but like the AB lenght.

Oh for God's sake, please don't trade anything valuable for someone needing Tommy John surgery.

QUOTE(fathom @ Jul 26, 2007 -> 09:58 AM) The Sox will sign Eckstein to play SS....and we'll have to hear how Hawk knew he was good, but not "this good". If he could stay healthy, you have to admit, he'd be an upgrade over Uribe.

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Jul 26, 2007 -> 09:49 AM) or was it the 4 that voted not to enforce current state laws which were acting politically? Both sides were, and it's implied that both sides knew that fully in the fact that the majority did not want that decision to be used as a precedent. The simple fact was that the election wound up decided by which side had appointed the most people to the court, and that is exactly how both sides voted. The law was not the issue.

QUOTE(LosMediasBlancas @ Jul 26, 2007 -> 09:20 AM) I agree. I've never really understood the hate towards Schilling. If I'm not mistaken, he's always responding to questions. You ask a question, you get an answer, right? For me, any dislike comes from his performance on the Hill, where he was up there shilling for MLB and saying "oh everything's great, there's no problem, you guys don't need to get involved" as the whole think kept getting bigger and bigger.