Balta1701

C'mon boys, let's get Jose another W...we owe him some runs as thanks for all those no decisions he got earlier in the year. (We're starting to Owe Buehrle some runs too, but that can wait until the Dodgers come to town)

QUOTE(robinventura23 @ Jun 13, 2005 -> 10:05 AM) I don't know why anyone is mentioning Konerko and All-Star in the same sentence. Is it because of his 15 HRs? I know it's not because of his .242 average. Tino Martinez more than likely will get the starting nod, with Mark Texeira backing him up. Their hitters just aren't putting up good enough numbers to go. The Sox all-stars more than likely will be Garland, Buehrle and/or Hermanson. If they have more than two, it will be cool but surprising. I think one of the biggest reasons that people keep mentionning Konerko and All Star in the same line is that Paulie was probably the most blatant snub from the team last year - Torre put Giambi on that team as a 1st baseman, and Paulie ended up being out-voted for the last spot by Matsui. 120 RBI's, 41 home runs is a pretty All-Star worthy set of numbers, IMHO. Question for you...Paulie's been hitting over .300 for like the last 3 weeks...how high would he need to get his average and RBI's for you to call him a legitimate AS Candidate (don't forget, there's also a DH spot in the order this year, and Ortiz can't be the only guy who fills that slot, so they could carry an extra 1b bat). And anywho, I kind of hope Paulie doesn't end up going, because I'd rather have him get the rest/finish moving those lawn chairs.

QUOTE(TheDybber @ Jun 13, 2005 -> 09:28 AM) I keep hearing Paulie is gonna go. there aren't a lot of 1B in the AL that are tearing it up right now. Morneau is better but been hurt. Maybe Tino, but he's fallen off after that big couple of weeks. And if Paulie keeps hitting well, and gets his average over .250, his power will get him into the ASG. Let's hope he doesn't do the HR derby though. I think Tino is going to be voted in. That Yankees market has so many people, and lots of them remember his good years and that 5 hr tear he went on earlier this year.

With Willie, I keep thinking about how useful it is to have a fast guy on the bench entirely for pinch-running situations. Think about this situation...bottom of 8th inning in the playoffs, down by 1 run, Konerko or Thomas get a single to lead off an inning. If Pods is starting in left (and he damn well better be), who do we send in to run if we don't have Willie? Gload? Willie Harris should stay on this team for the same reason Dave Roberts stayed on Boston last year; he can do good things as a designated pinch runner. That way, you don't need a triple to score Paulie from third.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Jun 13, 2005 -> 03:42 AM) So, Marte is effectively our only lefty reliever who can get lefties out. Did you check Marte's R/L splits? He's the same thing as Cotts, although not as good. Righties .213/.362/.404 Lefties .293/.356/.439 I'm also a bit amazed that the OBP for righties is higher than the lefties even though righties are hitting 80 points lower off of Marte. Walks, walks, walks.

QUOTE(maggliopipe @ Jun 13, 2005 -> 09:38 AM) well, i guess that's what i'm wondering. surely athletes were the first people exposed to steroids before the general public knew of them (for muscle development, that is). there must have been a period of time when baseball players were using them and they weren't yet banned. Granted there was probably some blanket rule against anything providing an unfair advantage and not explicitly banning roids, but then these contacts would seemingly be covered by that too. They weren't banned specfically in baseball until the early 90's, before the Strike. I can't remembe rthe exact year. Although, I think they may have been made illegal to the general public before that.

QUOTE(SoxFan101 @ Jun 13, 2005 -> 09:39 AM) Here is the real reason we lost last year... No 5th starter and not having Maggz and Thomas for over half the season. You're fully right there. It's not a coincidence that we lost our grip on 1st place right after both of those guys got hurt. Torii's hit on Burke was more a symptom than the disease itself; once those 2 hitters went down, the team didn't have a solid way to win lots of games any more. Minnesota was winning by wanting it more than anyone else and doing what it took to win. We weren't doing that. Hunter's hit on Burke may or may not have been necessary, may or may not have been dirty. But the fact is, if there was something Hunter could do that he felt was going to help his team win, he was going to do it. Our team wasn't. Once we lost those 2 batters, we couldn't swing our way to the division title any more, and the Twins came back and wanted it more. I'm glad to see him give us some props. I'll be just as glad to see them lose in the 1st round or miss the playoffs, or in the end, get swept by us in the ALCS.

I seriously doubt that Pods will make the AS Team either. While he's stolen a ton of bases, he's not exactly hitting like .330 or anything. Ichiro still has a better BA than Pods, and he fills the "speedy outfielder" role well enough. Besides, isn't the outfield one place where you usually find plenty of power hitters in the AS Game? I get the feeling that we're going to see some guys who normally play other positions get shunted to left...Let's run down the guaranteed outfield All stars M. Ramirez J. Damon Vlad the Impaler Ichiro Torii Hunter Probably Garret Anderson Well, maybe there's a slot open, but I don't think it'll go to Pods with all the other names to choose from.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Jun 12, 2005 -> 09:42 PM) Jermaine Dye vs. Righties - .239/.276/.419 Carl Everett vs. Righties - .218/.294/.403 White Sox vs. Righties - .244/.306/.382 What we really need is a LHH outfielder who can actually hit better against righties, but I'm wishing for the best of both worlds. I'm really wondering how much those number, in particular for Dye, might be biased by the fact that he had a terrible April & part of May. When you're terrible for 2 months, it takes a while for you to get yourself up to .270 or .280 against righties. Any idea how Dye has done against righties for the last month? Ditto Everett, he had that long left-handed slump in May where all he was trying to do was hit the ball out of the ballpark and was flying open on everything. He looks far better at the plate over the last week or two. I will bet you that those numbers will improve with time. But I will agree that I wouldn't complain to see Everett & Dye doing a little bit of sharing of that playing time in RF.

QUOTE(Jabroni @ Jun 12, 2005 -> 05:24 PM) And Willie is now hitting .237. I have a feeling that he will be sent down once Gload is healthy. I also don't think much of Willie's ability to play SS. When Willie was hitting .280, I would have agreed that he was the one to send down whenever Gload is ready, but he's rapidly closing the gap on Timo's BA. Willie does give you the benefit of speed, which means he's a decent pinch runner in the bottom of the 8th inning when you need a guy to steal a base against the Yankees down 3 games to 0 in the ALCS...wait a minute...something's amiss here.

A.J.'s power surge to me is 95% due to ballparks, as said above. The other 5% might very well be because he knows he can get the ball out of the Cell, so he's actually trying to hit them. Not only would about 8 of his home runs have hit the baggie in Minnesota, but San Francisco also has a fairly long porch in right field, so it's not exactly easy for anyone to hit the ball out of there unless they mysteriously add 50 pounds of muscle in the offseason like one who will not be named.

Perfect description of one of the reasons we're winning. In 2000, we might not have had the best team out there, but we won the most games by a good spread. Why? Because every night, we'd pick each other up. Someone would get the big hit or make the big pitch to win the game. This team has better pitching & better defense, but they have that same friendly attitude where everyone is working together. I think that can really help, and it probably was one of the driving forces in the Boston clubhouse last fall.

QUOTE(Jabroni @ Jun 11, 2005 -> 02:59 PM) They are horrible at manufacturing runs. They are the worst bunting team in baseball so they don't even try it. When you have guys like Ramirez and Ortiz both hitting .330 like they were last year, you really don't want to try to sacrifice runs, you want to get the guys on base so that they can be knocked in. Ramirez is only hitting .250 this year. That changes a lot of things.

QUOTE(Steff @ Jun 10, 2005 -> 09:47 AM) At Comiskey....??? No, it was in L.A. The Cubs will play the Yankees later this week I think. They played them for the first time at Wrigley a year or two ago, and that was a big deal. But while it'll be a cute series to see (and i'll have trouble figuring out who to root against), it won't be the same press that you got the first time they met since some random world series.

QUOTE(fathom @ Jun 11, 2005 -> 02:53 PM) Take a guy like Klesko last night, who has all 11 of his homers against rhp this season. I would much rather have Cotts face Klesko than Politte. Our Bullpen is starting to turn into a pretty good bullpen against righties, but I'm a bit concerned by our performance against the lefties. Hermanson is killing righties, but lefties are hitting over 300 against him. Cotts...well um, right handers seem to be hitting...get this....071 against Cotts. Lefties are hitting .278 against him. Marte...same sort of thing, righties hit .213 against him, lefties = .293. Politte...well lefties are hitting .174 against him and righties are hitting .140, so right now I could care less who he faces. Vizcaino and Shingo are struggling against both, although Viz has a history of being tough on lefties - just not this year, and Shingo last year was really tough on righties. Someone's gonna have to step up & get a little better against the lefties. Cotts or Marte are good candidates.

QUOTE(robinventura23 @ Jun 11, 2005 -> 11:47 AM) Anyway, don't know much about this Stauffer guy, but I hope he's no Eaton or Peavy. But MB hasn't had a decision since May 18. Almost a month. Tonight's a good a night as ever to get #8. Sadly, a lot of times it hasn't been Mark's fault, like that Extra-inning affair against the Angels. He was brilliant, team just couldn't get the runs. Seems like we can probably say that about almost every one of our starters except El Duque - we really owe Jose a few wins, and we've kinda let Garland down once or twice in the past few weeks. We owe Mark more than a couple of runs tonight.

QUOTE(SAVVY18 @ Jun 11, 2005 -> 02:58 PM) I actually use 3 spyware programs because 1 doesn't catch them all. I use the microsoft Beta, but I also use Adaware and spybot Search & Destroy. Here is a link to a bunch of free spyware programs: http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/security/fwantispy.html Adaware & Spybot are run on my computer quite often as well. I tried the Microsoft Spyware Beta but wasn't a big fan of it - it ate up a lot of computer cycles, and I tried to get it to set up to run an auto-scan every Friday when I was off at a discussion group, and for some reason it thought that Friday was Wednesday. If I have a problem in the future that Ad-Aware and Spybot can't fix, I'll consider reinstalling it, but I think I'm happier without it. I also have a program called "Spyware Blaster" which I find useful - supposedly it blocks your web browser from accessing spyware sites. I also have a "startup inspector" that shows me what programs start running when my computer starts up and lets me turn some of them off - another handy little gadget.

San Diego's been struggling. They lost 2 of 3 to Cleveland, we're "slightly" better than Cleveland, and we don't have to face either of their potential stoppers. L.A...we did you a favor today by helping you close in on the Padres, you did us a favor by knocking off the Twinkies. Let's repeat the favors tomorrow. Mark...Let's shoot for a 1 hour 50 minute game. I need to bike in to school to check on an experiment.

QUOTE(qwerty @ Jun 10, 2005 -> 11:49 PM) Why would a mediocore erstad have put us over the top and into the playoffs? This guy is extremely overpaid (7.5 this year and 8.5 the next). He also has a no trade clause included into his contract and i will never understand why. Some teams just give away no trade clauses like they're candy. I think that no trade clauses are pretty often signs of a bad GM/Owner. Almost everyone out there can find themselves in a situation where a trade could potentially help the team. Boston's philosophy is brilliant...they have like 5 guys who immediately get No Trade Clauses if they actually sign anyone to a no trade clause, but since no one has gotten one out of them, they have zero no trade clauses. That's how you structure some contracts. I can see maybe doing it with a veteran, a guy like Frank who's given a ton of service to your organization...but just as a sign of loyalty. That's the only reason it makes sense to me.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Jun 10, 2005 -> 11:55 PM) Erstad was a decent LH stick, something we lacked, and was also a good defensive player. Ross Gload.

One of the reasons the Wild Card teams have done so well the last few years is that the Wild Card is almost always very highly contested. That tends to select out the hottest team going into the playoffs. So you get the Marlins, the BoSox, the Angels, all of them when they're on fire. Conversely, the thinking is, if a team wrapped up their division a month ago, then they can get rusty. You can find examples of division winners who wrap up early who perform well and division winners who perform poorly. Atlanta wrapped it up early last year, and they came out terrible in the playoffs. St. Louis wrapped it up as early as anyone, and they came out & made the world series. On the other hand, the Angels won a very, very close division last year, with Vlad the Impaler carrying them to the end, and then they hit the Red Sox & were blown apart. There's just no science to it. Sometimes it helps your team to wrap up early because you can rest your starters. Sometimes it hurts because you're rusty. Until I see this team in October, I won't have a clue which one is better. I don't think there' sa formula to tell which way it'll be.

All you guys saying Timo could pitch... Don't you remember when Widger was warming up in that early Cleveland game? He's clearly our last pitching option.

Law's health is the reason he hasn't signed thus far. I think his health for next season should be called highly questionnable, especially given that he's been playing for quite a while now. That's a good reason not to make a major investment in him.

QUOTE(KipWellsFan @ Jun 10, 2005 -> 11:04 PM) http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/200...anns050610.html The reality of the mad cow situation in this nation is an absolute mess. Other nations test every single cow, or every single "downer" cow (cows that can't walk) for the disease. Other nations have far better testing equipment. Other nations make much more certain that cow parts aren't fed to other cattle, which is one major method of transmission. This nation doesn't even test every single downer cow. Cows that can't walk (one of the first symptoms of the disease) still make it into the food supply. Quite often in fact. If there really was another case, the U.S. almost certainly wouldn't know about it. In Japan, they instituted a program where they would test every cow, and they found multiple cows that were infected but showed no symptoms. In Britain, where it first started hitting, a few years after they had ignored the problem, people started turning up sick and dead. That is what I fear will happen here. The Cattle industry gives heavy political donations to the Republican party. The people running the regulatory agencies are literally lobbyists for the cattle industry. This situation won't change until people start dying. A year or so ago there was a farmer who wanted to test all of his cattle so that they could fetch a higher price on the open market. The lobbyists who run the regulatory agencies genuinely would not let him do that. They forced him to not test every one of his cattle, as is required to sell the beef in many countries. That is how corrupt this industry is. Eventually, it's going to cost a lot of lives. We can still maybe stop it now. A few years from now, it'll be too late.

QUOTE(ScottPodRulez22 @ Jun 10, 2005 -> 09:39 PM) Noe the box score says hermanson didnt give up and earned run his era is at 1.00. Rowand got the #4 web gem Excellent. ArRow earned that. I'm happy.