Balta1701

In case you somehow missed the other thread...last night John Kruk on Baseball tonight went off on a rant about how only 12,000 or so White Sox fans showed up in 40 degree windy weather to beat the last place team in our division. Well...I have a rant against Kruk in response. I watched the 40 minute Baseball tonight last night, and by the end of the show, I was literally screaming at the TV because of how badly our team was being screwed over in terms of coverage. I've got a bundle of examples of them doing this, so bear with me. First, one of their "Themes" of the night was poor baserunning. In this vein...they took the liberty to show the 1st-inning Royals double play, where both Everett and Iguchi were thrown out on the basepaths, at least 2 to 3 times - a couple while talking about baserunning, and a repeat when they showed the Sox highlights. Secondly...the White Sox hit 2 home runs in that game. KC hit 3, 2 by Sweeney. The Sox won the game. So what highlights did they choose to show when they showed the game highlights? Not any of the Sox home runs...they showed the first shot by Sweeney, and Everett's double. There was not a mention of ARow's shot, nor was there a mention of Iguchi's first home run in the US. It gets worse. At the end of the show...they run through highlights of some of the bigger home runs of the day. Guess who's shot they showed? Guess who's they didn't? They replayed the Sweeney home run, and ignored ARow and Iguchi again. In their web gems segment...those 2 early plays by Mark Buehrle got no credit. They also weren't shown in any of the highlight reels. I thought that at least 1 of them should have been noticed. And here's the one that really infuriated me. At the end of the show, they gave some air time to the people they thought were their players of the day. Their offensive one? Craig Wilson of the Pirates. What did Wilson do? He went 4 for 4, with 1 home run, 2 rbi's and 1 run scored. In case you don't remember, a guy named Tadahito Iguchi went 4 for 4, with 1 home run (his first in the USA), 2 rbi's, and 2 runs scored. And once again, he was completely glossed over...despite having what I think are better numbers than Wilson. John Kruk wants to lecture the White Sox fans about how they aren't coming out to the ballgame in 40 degree weather against the Royals. But on the same token, it's hard for me to even believe that they had anybody even watching the game. They didn't mention Dye, they didn't mention ARow, they didn't show any of those plays by Buehrle, and most annoyingly, they hardly noticed the great day had by Iguchi. If baseball tonight thinks they can lecture White Sox fans about not coming out to the park in crappy conditions, maybe they could take a second to actually acknowledge the better parts of the game, or at least pretend that they had really watched it.

CNN.com/Sports Illustrated have a piece up of the "20 best young pitchers in baseball." # 2 is our very own Mark Buehrle Here's what they have to say about him... "Mark Buehrle, 26, White Sox Season: 3-1, 3.89, K/BB: 25-9 Career: 72-46, 3.76, K/BB: 606-249 The White Sox's underrated workhorse already has four seasons of 200-plus innings under his belt. That's pretty good for a 38th round draft pick." Their #1 pitcher is Santana, as you probably expected, but I took some joy in the fact that they ranked Buehrle higher than Zambrano or Prior. John Garland was ranked #13.

QUOTE(redandwhite @ May 3, 2005 -> 02:04 PM) I don't post here anymore, but Willie Harris was placed on the DL thus resulting in the call up of Jamie Burke. Did Harris get hurt at some point? I thought he was the healthy one - the game he missed on Sunday was supposedly due to some sort of family issue, according to all the news reports.

Thus far this year, he's played in 7 games, had 19 at bats...7 hits.

QUOTE(SuperSteve @ May 2, 2005 -> 11:23 AM) So trade a proven guy so we can going into the playoff race with guys who have never been in the majors before? It's worked for Oakland. At some point you have to decide what you want your team to do...they can be good almost every year if you keep the right people in...and then you can take your chances in the playoffs, sometimes with unproven guys. Or you can be great for 1 or 2 years, have a better chance in the playoffs for those 2 years, and then have a sudden dropoff when you lose those people (see Cleveland in 2000). Personally...I think that our best chance is to try to put together a very good team every year, and hope someone like McCarthy magically does a Josh Beckett and pulls off a miracle during the playoffs. Given how volatile things can be in the postseason...if you're in there, you've got a chance, even if its just as a wild card. Unless of course, you're the Yankees and you can buy everyone and their grandmother to fill your pitching staff.

QUOTE(Jake @ May 2, 2005 -> 11:10 AM) That's exactly what I'm talking about. Also take note of what the run scored averages would be over all - the USA Today guy would find that we had a much higher average runs scored than we have had over any other stretch this season, but we'd still win more games now. What the USA Today guy isn't remembering is that last year, in 4 guys, the Sox had 40% of their total salary tied up: Konerko, Valentin, Lee, and Ordonez. No team in baseball dumped such a high percentage of its salary into only 4 guys. Not one - and that doesn't even count Thomas's dollars either. By letting those guys go, we were able to spread those dollars around. So yeah, we might not have 2 MVP candidates at the center of our lineup, but now we've got 5 actual starters, an improved bullpen, a deeper bench, and fewer holes in our lineup overall. We've spread the money around more, and it's working. Also - let's keep in mind...those 4 run per game numbers are with people like Jermaine Dye hitting .170, and I still dont' th ink he'll do that poorly the whole season. And Konerko hitting .230.

QUOTE(Punch and Judy Garland @ May 2, 2005 -> 11:00 AM) Right but you don't use them if all of your starting five is under contract. While B-Mac should be in the rotation next year, he won't be. Moving Garland after the season at a high value could be a smart move I think moving a pitcher might be a smart move, but I'd disagree with the "after the season" part. As far as I've been able to see, your best chance at getting an absolute steal in a trade is to make a deal just before the trading deadline. If you've got a starting pitcher to move...2 months into the season, you'll have guys lining up at your door offering the shirt off their back if that's what it takes. Look what we gave up for Garcia! Or again, look what the Mets gave up for Kazmir, etc. And if we were to consider moving a pitcher...I'd suggest Hernandez before Garland - assuming Garland only goes through arbitration, both of their contracts will be up at the end of 2006, and Garland has much mor eof a future.

QUOTE(Punch and Judy Garland @ May 2, 2005 -> 10:55 AM) I don't really like the idea of having a rotation that makes $40-50 million annually either though Think about this as a rotation then...Garcia's locked up at $9 a year...At some point in 2 or 3 years we'll have BMac and Gonzalez up, both of whom will be in the low millions their first few years...barring another pitcher coming up (Adkins) that'll leave us with 2 more roster spots to fill. Buehrle and Garland strike me as an ideal pair...and that gives us roughly a $30 million starting 5, and Kenny Williams won't need to trade for any more pitchers. That's the nice thing about bringing up the young guys - they don't cost a lot.

QUOTE(Punch and Judy Garland @ May 2, 2005 -> 10:50 AM) Who was the last pitcher to get more than three years, navarro? I would let Jon go to arbitration and make him prove himself all of this year and next before signing a long term deal. Problem with that is...if he keeps this up this year...we don't sign him...and then he does this again next year, he might be looking at Kevin Brown type numbers for a long-term contract. If you sign him to a 3 year deal after this season is over...yeah it costs you more next year, but then you save more the next 2 years. Can you imagine...if the Yankees or Red Sox miss the playoffs this year, what they would pay to get a 27 year old who has just come off 2 stellar seasons with the White Sox, if Garland pulls that off? It's nice to make "Certain" that he can prove himself, but if he gets out on the free agent market, I wouldn't expect him back. He'll earn way too much.

QUOTE(Controlled Chaos @ May 2, 2005 -> 10:17 AM) He will be releasing a statement any time now with the standard response of "I bought it at the store, I didn't know it was bad" and that's it. 10 days go by and he will be back pitching again. You're 100% right, and that's why Selig's new proposal is so important. I fully agree with the position John Kruk took on BBTN yesterday evening - these guys get paid millions of dollars to perform. They know exactly what they are putting in their bodies - it can cost you a million dollars a season if something doesn't work well. The "I didn't know what it was" excuse is going to be garbage in 99.9% of cases, but everyone still employs it, since its their only rational defense. If you have Selig's 50 day suspension proposal become the law of the game, then there is absolutely no excuse for anyone testing positive. These guys would risk losing $100,000+ for even the minimum-wage guys if they had 1 positive test. At that point, if you're putting something in your body wihtout knowing exactly what it is, you deserve to be suspended...and the people who do get suspended will be the ones who still thought they could beat the system. Anyone care to make any wagers about whether or not Rincon's performance level declines around the end of this season?

QUOTE(Punch and Judy Garland @ May 2, 2005 -> 10:12 AM) I believe once you test positive you are on accelrated testing but I'm not sure when that kicks in and there is a chance I'm thinking of football You are correct that you're thinking of football - in that game, if a person tests positive, he's gone for 1/4 of the season, and then is subject to something like 10+ random tests per year for the rest of his career. While there may be some reason to not trust that the NFL is not telling us the whole story on their testing program (check out this Bayless piece), at least on paper it works very well

QUOTE(Punch and Judy Garland @ May 2, 2005 -> 10:06 AM) Here's my question: Let's say you injected steroids last week. This week you get tested and fail and are suspended for ten days. Upon your return, about three weeks after using, you get tested again within 2 weeks or so. Wouldn't you still test positive from the initial usage? Do they give you a free pass since you say it's fromt he first time? Again..another reason why we need 50 game suspensions. Everyone reading this thread should do anything they can to support that proposal by Selig. I'd say that the odds of a person being tested 2 weeks after a suspension are basically nil, given that they're only tested like 2 or 3 times a year at most. But aside from that, as far as I read the rules, if the player did test positive twice, I'd expect him to receive the 2nd suspension level - I don't think there's any sort of free pass in there, assuming that they did remove the Commissioner's free pass that was discussed before Congress.

See...now this is exactly why we need 50 day suspensions for positive tests - let's see if this guy can really perform without the junk.

QUOTE(sircaffey @ May 2, 2005 -> 09:29 AM) I don't think that's entirely true. I doubt we add MORE pitching. Pitching is ALWAYS the most expensive come the deadline. If you want to make a good comparison of what the Sox would be looking to do this deadline, look to the Delgado/Walker deals for the comparison. A Kazmir type was not part of those deals. Yeah, but I would say that this year is even more of a seller's market than last year - aside from Todd Helton, can you name a single person out there that a team might be willing to simply dump? Tampa Bay has a closer that some people are interested in, and Billy Beane is certain to do something, but other than that, there aren't that many people available unless you give up a lot or take on a ton of salary (Mike Sweeney). When you look at it...a lot of teams, like Pitt, Tampa, KC, are where they are not because they're overloaded with bad contracts any more - they're there because they have a ton of young guys that they're trying to develop, and those aren't the kinds of guys you make a deal with.

In his interview with 20/20 a year ago, Victor Conte, the BALCO guy, alleged that the use of amphetimines was in fact a huge problem in baseball (bigger than steroids); people taking them before games to get more charged up. They are fairly easy to test for as far as I know - they're the sorts of things that are tested for in your standard, "I'm at the doctor and i need a physical" drug test. it's another part of the game that needs to be cleaned up...and it seems Bud Selig may finally be realizing this.

QUOTE(aboz56 @ May 2, 2005 -> 09:16 AM) What would we have to give up to get him? That's the $10,000 question right there. When these trade threads come up here, I think everyone should keep 1 thing in mind; by the time the trading deadline rolls around this year, the odds are there will only be 4 or 5 teams who are truly "out of it" beyond any shadow of a doubt (Pitt, Tampa, KC), and maybe 4 or 5 other teams at most who are like the Astros last year; still have a remote shot and may be either buyers or sellers depending on where they are with their teams (Cleveland has a shot to be here, Milwaukee, Probably someone in the NL West, Houston, Cubs, probably someone else you won't expect). This means that more than 2/3 of the teams in baseball are going to be either looking to stand pat or to add something for the pennant race. That is a sellers market. Last year, the Devil Rays got a #1 rookie starter, Scott Kazmir, from the Mets for a #3 or #4 starter. All indications are that if you want to make an upgrading-deal this year...you're going to need to do something like that also. So yeah...if we really want to add something in a trade that's going to be better than what we have, the odds are it's going to cost us BMac or BAnderson level talent. And those are a few guys I don't want KW to touch.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ May 1, 2005 -> 11:10 PM) I was beginning to wonder how many more batters needed to be hit by these bottom feeders before we responded in kind. I only wish Garland had bounced a fastball off that asshole's noggin. You know what? I can live with it being behind his back...no one gets hurt...they have less reason to retaliate, and the message is still sent that we're sick of our guys getting nailed.

QUOTE(Cy Garland @ May 1, 2005 -> 08:15 PM) DJ's contract is up after this year if anyone was wondering. If Steve Stone is willing to take a job on the south side...I want him. Best color man in baseball.

Aside from all the more-than-expected Rondell White bashing...was anyone else extremely happy to see the Sox pitchers finally respond? We've spent like 6 games being nailed left and right by baseballs, to the point that it's literally hurting quite a few of our guys. Thanks for sending a message John...I don't want to see our guys getting nailed the whole season on this junk just because people think they can.

Right now we have 2 guys on the bench who can play the infield - Harris and Ozuna. We have 1 backup catcher who can also play a little 3b (and it seems...also pitch?) We will have a backup 1b when Frank gets back. We have 1 backup outfielder in Timo, another backup outfielder in Everett who also does some DH work, and until Frank gets back, we have Gload who can also play 1b or DH. This team is loaded in terms of quality reserves. There is not a single reason to even consider trading for another one unless someone ends up seriously hurt - it would hardly be an upgrade over what we have now, and there's just no roster spot open. Hell, I could see us being a team that has reserves to trade - both Thomas and Everett have contracts that end this season, and I can picture teams (Houston, Atlanta) giving up a ton for an additional bat. There are only 2 reasons why we seem so banged up - 1, a string of bad luck, such as A.J.'s toe getting hit, and 2; the Bean(e) ball war that Oakland launched...hitting Pablo & Crede repeatedly & pitching so far in on Uribe that he pulled a muscle getting out of the way. Give us a few more days and things will suddenly correct themselves.

Damn...after going through the Hell that was the bottom of the 6th...having things finally work out in the 7th was an absolute freaking joy. Finally we got some people on base...got them moving over...got a bunt down...and drove them in. God that was a relief! Feels like it's been a week since we've done that. In other good news...while Paulie didn't pull off a hit in the later innings, at least he ripped the ball twice. He might be a little ahead of the ball, but at least he's hitting the ball hard again, and it wasn't going straight up. That shot to Third base is only going to be an out 1 time out of 10.

Ok, there are really 2 things pissing me off right now about this team. 1: Shingo Takatsu's control. What the Hell happened to Shingo? He has all of his pitches. He struck Irod out on an 9 mph fastball that totally blew Irod's mind. His changing of speeds is still there. But every single damned batter he starts off with a pitch that's at their ankles. If he gets that ball up another 2 inches he'll be unbeatable. But he just can't get that ball to rise on him. Secondly...what the Hell happened to small ball? We had so many freaking guys on base leading off innings and we never moved them over once! I mean, I know A.J. is hurt, so its hard to hit and run with him, but this game was just pathetic! We didn't do all of the th ings that have been winning games for us; getting people on base, bunting and putting pressure on the defense, using the hit & run to open up holes in the defense, having people take off, and so on. The only thing we did to put pressure on the defense...Iguchi taking off in the 8th...actually worked! Irod threw the ball away! I know our guys are hurting...but it seemed to me like Ozzie was trying more to avoid hurting anyone else than win the game.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Apr 29, 2005 -> 11:07 AM) The one thing I would definately disagree with is that the Twins were supposed to be better. They lost their starting left side of the infield, along with some of their OF depth. They also have had some injury problems, and signed no one in the off season. Yeah, the Twins lost the left side of their infield, but at the same time, they brought up other players who could play those spots. While they might not be improving at those positions...the argument was that we should take a look at what else they have; an improved offense. While Morneau was hurt for 15 days or so, if you stretch his numbers last season out over a full year, he would have hit 30 home runs for the twins, and they haven't had a 30 HR guy in decades. On top of that, they were looking at a healthy Joe Mauer, and expecting him to produce a lot more runs. On top of that, they have Nathan in the closer's role for the 2nd year, their big signing in the off season was holding onto Radke, and they locked Santana up for several more years as well. Plus, Santana was really shaky for the first 1/3 of last season - he had an ERA over 5 for the first 2 months, which gives him even more room for improvement. So, their defense on the left side was supposed to be worse, but their hitting was supposed to significantly improve, and they were saying that should more than offset the left side of their infield, along with whatever young guys they bring up or trade for. That said...we're still a better team.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Apr 29, 2005 -> 10:57 AM) Its a negative because that means we still have games left against good teams. I don't buy into this at all. Yeah, we do still have games against plenty of good teams (Angels, Yankees, Bosox come to mind), but on the other hand, we've been hot at the time it would help us the most. We opened this season against the AL Central. 2 teams in the AL Central were supposed to be much improved this season: Cleveland and Detroit. We've played both and beaten up on both. Minnesota was supposed to be even better this season than last. We've given them a little bloody nose. If you're trying to win a division, the best time to be hot is against your own division. The more you beat up on yoru own division, the harder it becomes for them to pass you. The only team I'll say we've played that can't finish the season .500 or better is the Royals, and we've beaten up on everyone but Oakland. (ANd we would have beaten oakland if either we could catch the ball or the umps called better games). We've played good teams and we've roughed them up. It's a very good sign.

If Oakland and Minnesota were the only good teams we played...well that's a great thing, because it means its the Sox & Twins battling for the top of the division, and I like a 2 team race much better than a 4 team one. Maybe it'll also shut Dimitri Young up. And on top of that...let's also remember that everyone is calling the Twins a good team, and we've taken 4 out of 5 from them (thereby giving the Twinkies 4 losses, btw.) And I'm a bit bewildered by Rob Neyer's piece on why the Sox won't win the AL Central, especially since Rob Neyer picked the Sox to win the AL Central barely a month ago! (I'd give you a link but I don't have ESPN Insider access)