RME JICO

Either way this is bad news. If the injury was anywhere else on his body, it would be no big deal, but not to the throwing elbow. Here is a funny link about player values compared to their career salary: http://mikesrants.baseballtoaster.com/archives/322892.html Dreifort takes the honor as the least productive player ever. Surprising Contreras is #4 due to his huge contract from the Yanks. Mike Hampton signed a contract with the Rockies for 8 years/121 million in 2001. Average $15.125 million a year. His contract goes thru 2008. He currently has 53 wins from 2001-2005. He would have to win 68 games in the last 3 years of his contract to average $1 million per start. That is a pretty bad deal too.

I think the first reaction is to doubt a player that it not coming up the traditional way, but some guys just figure it out. Sometimes thats all it takes. From what I have seen of Logan, he seems like he belongs in the big leagues. The way he is pitching, I am sure he would be the 2nd Lefty out of a lot of bullpens. He just needs to continue to throw strikes.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=Ar6Y...=yhoo&type=lgns

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Mar 19, 2006 -> 02:14 AM) I actually think he will replace him by the end of the year . Wow, really. If that is the case, would the Sox move Iguchi for a middle reliever, or would they hang onto him? Iguchi seems to be in a bad spot. He was supposed to excel in his new spot in the order, and he has actually hit worse than almost every player on the roster this spring. I know he tried to change his swing, and that lead to some trouble at the plate, but you would hope he would breakout sooner or later.

If Iguchi continues to struggle, do the Sox put Cintron in to start at 2B? Iguchi is batting .118 this spring.

The refs did play a huge part in the Illini loss. You outshoot a team in FG and FT %, grab more rebounds, and dish out almost double the assists - AND LOSE. This is a horrible way for Dee and James to go out. James shot 7-9 and Dee shot 5-18. They should have put the ball inside to James a lot more. Letting WASH come back from 11 down should never have happened. Jamar Smith going 1-7 didn't help either. Just like in last year's championship game, the Illlini could not hit shots when they needed them. Good year, disappointing finish.

For what its worth, he was also one of the best hitters in the WBC (with more than 20 AB's) batting .333 with 8 hits. He also score 5 runs.

This should be a conditional question. If Pods is healthy how many bases will he steal? In that case 70+. Otherwise, probably 40-50.

There were about 6-8 relievers that have pitched well in the WBC that are not on MLB rosters. I wonder if the Sox are looking at any of those guys? Most of the announcers for the WBC were surprised at the depth and quality of the bullpens. (KOR, JPN, PR, DOM, VEN) all had pitchers not on MLB rosters. Cuba obviously has a few too, but...

Good time to break the losing streak. Thome and Mackowiak homer.

* Sox win between 97-102 games, win Division by 3+ games * Sox have 5 pitchers with 15 wins and 200IP * Sox have 3 players with 30 HRs * Sox hit 200 HRs again * Uribe improves * Iguchi struggles early * Pods steals 70+ * Mackowiak plays more than expected * Vazquez pitches better than expected * Garland is not a one year wonder, pitches well * Anderson starts out slow, then heats up * AJ ups his BA to .280 * Sweeney is a late season call up * Cotts continues his dominance * Sox have less one run games * Sox lock up Contreras with new contract AL Central Sox AL East Yankees AL West Oakland Wild Card Indians

QUOTE(SSH2005 @ Mar 16, 2006 -> 06:53 AM) I think Hermanson blew it by not having back surgery this offseason. If he's going to try to pitch with his back pain again like he did in the second half of last season, he's going to be of little use to our bullpen. He'll get rocked. I'm sure KW isn't depending on him. Yeah, there is no way the Sox are going to rely on Hermie. If 4+ months of rest doesn't alleviate the problem, then more rest is not going to do it for him either. The best option would be to go ahead and fix the problem with surgery and come back at 100%.

QUOTE(SSH2005 @ Mar 16, 2006 -> 06:55 AM) It's bad enough that we have to choose from one of these lefties. We definately don't need two LOOGY's in our bullpen along with Cotts. KW will get another righty to replace Hermanson. I am just saying that if 2 of these guys turn out to be decent pitchers, would the Sox even consider going with 3 lefties?

That's good to hear. Sounds like age catching up to Pods. I hope this is not a recurring issue this year.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Mar 16, 2006 -> 05:37 AM) Yeah looks like I got one again as well. I assume it'll be the same for everyone else. Yeah, when I broke down the message, it looked like it came from a mass emailer.

QUOTE(Jordan4life_2006 @ Mar 16, 2006 -> 03:22 AM) According to Joey Cora, that one outing wasn't even all that bad. Yeah, I saw that too. Now if Lopez and Logan both look good, do the Sox take 2 Lefties and go with: R: McCarthy, Politte, Jenks L: Cotts, Lopez, Logan

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Mar 16, 2006 -> 04:46 AM) Thanks again for the heads up there RME JICO. I'm sure Jason and Alex will probably suss out what's going on with this in the morning. DBAH0, No problem.

Just FYI to board members. I just received another malicious email subject: hello all my dear friends =))) (From Soxtalk.com). If you get an email like this, do not open it. Email actually comes from: 4sportspage.propagation.net [66.221.200.212]

QUOTE(YASNY @ Mar 16, 2006 -> 01:41 AM) As I said earlier, if this guy shows he's got what it takes to OG, DC and KW he'll get every opportunity to show what he can do. What he's done in the past has little, if any, bearing. The saying "What have you done for me lately?" comes to mind here. I agree. If the Sox always worried about what the player did last year or how much experience he had, then Jenks, Count, Vazquez, Politte, Cotts, and Garland would have never gotten a shot at proving themselves. If Logan can throw strikes, and keep batters off balance, he is going to get a shot. From all the reports, he has very good movement on all his pitches. So if he has good control, it looks like the Sox found another gem. I also think Lopez still has a shot. In 8 1/3IP, he has 10 Ks and only 1 BB. That is very promising. Besides one bad outing, he has looked pretty good.

Might as well give him a shot. If hitters have never seen him before, and there is not much info on him, he could get away with some pitches. I would still rather have a proven vet or a player that doesn't make the cut and is out of options like Gload/Borch.

QUOTE(Chisoxfn @ Mar 15, 2006 -> 12:53 AM) Its amazing. He makes one change to his arm angle and has a shot of going from pretty much rookie ball (where he wasn't anything special) to the majors. I think that says just how bad our pen situation really is (at least the back of the pen). I agree. At least it is not our top one or two guys out of the pen. We are looking at our last two out of the pen, and like Viz, would be put in when the Sox were already losing. Vizcaino pitched in 35 of the team's 63 losses, Marte in 20, and Shingo in 13. Now some performances obviously overlap, but 68 is still a lot of garbage time. I think the bigger issue will be with Pods.

Unfortunately Pods is a hard player to replace. If he is not 100%, then they need to give Owens a shot.

I would have added Blakely and Reynoso to the Hot, and dropped Gload and Lopez to the Not. Blakely is batting .313, .389 OBP, .750 SLG, with 2 HRs, a 2B, and a SB. Reynoso has pitched 5 scoreless innings, with only 2 hits and 6 K's. Lopez has dropped off and has a 6.14 ERA in 7IP. His only saving grace is his 8:1 K:BB ratio.

To put things into perspective, I took a look at last year's stats to see what the Sox have to replace in terms of pitching. If you take the stats for El Duque, Viz, Marte, and now Hermanson, the Sox would have to replace the following: IP H ER BB ERA WHIP D Hermanson 57.3 46 13 17 2.04 1.10 J Vizcaino 70.0 74 29 29 3.73 1.47 D Marte 45.3 45 19 33 3.77 1.72 O Hernandez 128.3 137 73 50 5.12 1.46 Total 301.0 302 134 129 4.00 1.43 Now if Vazquez can eat his normal 210 innings, Jenks takes 30 more than last year (39IP), and McCarthy takes 40 more than last year (67IP), that is 280 IP. So the other relievers would have to pitch about 21 innings if all the other pitchers pitched the same amount as last year. Then I realized that I should include all other pitchers into the equation (Shingo, Baj, etc), and using their totals the Sox would have to replace: IP H ER BB ERA WHIP S Takatsu 28.7 30 19 16 5.97 1.60 J Bajenaru 4.3 4 3 0 6.23 0.92 J Adkins 8.3 13 8 4 8.64 2.04 K Walker 7.0 10 7 5 9.00 2.14 D Sanders 2.0 3 3 1 13.50 2.00 Total 50.3 60 40 26 7.15 1.71 1st Total 301.0 302 134 129 4.00 1.43 Overall 351.3 362 174 155 4.46 1.47 So in reality, the Sox last two relievers would have to pitch about 71 total innings to equal last year's effort. Also, the 50 1/3 innings with an ERA of 7.15, WHIP 1.71 should not be that hard to replace.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Mar 14, 2006 -> 04:30 AM) Gotcha. My bad. No prob, good catch!