RME JICO

Longest time between World Series victories.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Apr 10, 2008 -> 02:05 PM) Chris who??? oh wait that didn't work in this instance, DAMMIT Widger, Singleton, Carter, Young, etc.

QUOTE (greasywheels121 @ Apr 10, 2008 -> 01:21 PM) Frank is not an Ex-Sox. He is ever-present. Also, there is so much activity with ex-Sox, you could probably make a sub-forum in the DC for this. Garland and Young seem to get almost daily mentions.

QUOTE (joesaiditstrue @ Apr 9, 2008 -> 02:07 PM) Paul Byrd just gave up a 2nd inning Slam to Mike Napoli lol 4-0 angels and 2 HRs in the 3rd. He only lasted 3 innings.

Even after their brutal start, they still are projected to win more games than the Sox (from Accuscore): http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=Ar1j...o&type=lgns This thread can probably be merged with this one in the DC: http://www.soxtalk.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=63696

QUOTE (TitoMB345 @ Apr 9, 2008 -> 10:06 AM) Haha, I've never seen those ones before. Must be new. You have to "Show All" to view some of the them. Like this one:

I could see somewhere around 825-850, but 900 would be over a 200 run increase in one year. That would be crazy. Possible, but unlikely.

QUOTE (RudyLawRules @ Apr 8, 2008 -> 04:35 PM) Just saw the ESPN crawl that said the Red Sox shut out the Tigers in the Fenway opener. Detroit has 2 more in Boston and then comes into The Cell for the weekend. I know it's waaaaaaaaayyyyy too early in the season, but how important could this series with the Tigers be? Heck, Detroit could conceivably limp in to town 0-9. Would you rather have them come into the Cell winless or with at least one win? Would they press more as they lose more, or will they try harder if they lose more?

QUOTE (lostfan @ Apr 8, 2008 -> 12:12 PM) I think one would be hard-pressed to find a pitcher with a sucky K:BB ratio who doesn't range from mediocre to bad. My original statement was worded a little wrong. That is correct, and if you think about it, the guys with less K's are hard pressed to maintain a good K:BB ratio.

QUOTE (Texsox @ Apr 8, 2008 -> 10:28 AM) /hijack Strikeouts are also, IMHO overrated for pitchers. I'd rather a guy have a 1-2-3 inning with all ground outs and 7 pitches than 1-2-3 with strikeouts and 18 pitches. /back Strikeouts are overrated for pitchers? Here are the top 10 strikeout pitchers from 2007: Kazmir, Santana, Bedard, Vazquez, Sabathia, Matsuzaka, Beckett, Haren, Shields, Verlander. That is a pretty good group of pitchers. You can't completely discount K's. They shouldn't be the first discriminator, but should be considered. With your example, there is no way to determine the pitch count by the outcome. I have seen AB's 10 or more pitches long end in a groundout. Granted a strikeout has a minimum of 3 pitches while a groundout has a minimum of 1. However, the probability of reaching base is basically zero with a strikeout (except for AJ) and is around 34% for a ball in play. So looking at the odds, it is actually better to keep the ball out of play. That doesn't even take fielding errors into account.

QUOTE (Texsox @ Apr 8, 2008 -> 09:54 AM) While putting the ball in play may lead to good things, most of the time and out is an out. Certainly you need to look at why he is striking out, poor pitch selection, getting fooled, etc. But I'm more interested in obp and ba. True, but if you strikeout a lot and have a low OBP, then something needs to change. Thome strikes out a ton, but also walks a ton and has a nice OBP. Last year, Fields struck out a lot and had a low OBP (.308). An out is an out, but K's are very important to pitchers because more balls in play equate to a higher probability of a hit/error. A strikeout has basically a zero probability. Now a ball in play can also lead to a double play, etc, but that only occurs in certain situations where a hit/error can occur on every ball put in play. One more year in AAA or until the trading deadline will hopefully help him. I would rather have him play everyday in AAA instead of riding the pine in the bigs with sporadic AB's.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan101 @ Apr 8, 2008 -> 08:53 AM) My reason for bias against Joe actually isn't Josh Fields as much as it's I don't like having a 3rd basemen with a .306 career on base and .754 career OPS. I know he's clutch and a great fielder, but you have to overcompensate at other positions offensively to make up for a typical Joe Crede season. Then again, maybe we've done that this year when you look at our lineup, assuming Quentin and Swisher play everyday all year. Joe is only going to be a 7-8-9 hitter in this lineup. The below .800 OPS is not acceptable though. He needs to produce like 2006 or better.

Damn, I thought it was Chris Young, but he only leads the league in HR's. Swisher leads the league in walks with 9. AJ still holding on to the Batting lead at .458.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Apr 8, 2008 -> 08:30 AM) All of those strikeouts would be ok if he could offset it with a high OBP which he cannot at this point. Whether he does it through contact (ideally) or from drawing a higher number of walks, either way he's got to raise that by about 60 points if he's going to strike out 160 times a year. 160? If he plays a full season of games, he would have close to 200 K's.

I don't know if this was posted, but Baseball-Reference recently added Minor league stats to their database. So now you can easily search for minor league stats on there as well. I know there are other places to do this already, so this is just FYI. http://minors.baseball-reference.com/ http://minors.baseball-reference.com/affiliates.cgi?aid=CHW Also, I completely forgot that Jon Rauch won BA Minor League POY in 2000.

My biggest concern with Fields is his strikeouts. 125 k's in 373 AB's with only 35 BB's. Crede or Ventura never came close to that ratio. I have no problem letting him get more AB's in AAA. Now the problem will arise if Crede shows no signs of back problems all year and continues to produce. Do you even attempt to re-sign Crede or do the Sox automatically give the job to Josh next season? If you sign Crede, does Josh become a trading chip or do you look at him maybe at 1B?

It seems like more and more players are allowing teams to buyout the remainder of their arb years for a little bit of an earlier payday.

Gotta love 2 out RBI's, 4 of them no less. This team has some confidence.

Congrats to AJ. Hard to argue with them on this award.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?i...ce=MLBHeadlines

QUOTE(WilliamTell @ Apr 7, 2008 -> 01:11 PM) According to emailers, Ozzie plays Latino's only. That's affirmative action right there, haha. Aren't they the majority though? That would make it discrimination.

LOL. Millwood 0-2, 1 CG, 1.29 ERA. To pitch a CG with 0 ER and lose. That has to suck.

I can imagine that his entire season will be like this. Either he is on and inducing GBs or not and getting hammered - no in between.

QUOTE(CWSGuy406 @ Apr 7, 2008 -> 10:16 AM) This is insanity. Make all the fat jokes you want about Uribe, he is without a doubt the best defensive second-baseman the Sox have. He may very well be the best SS the Sox have. They were also mentioning that during the game yesterday. Uribe may have the best arm of all 2B.

QUOTE(kyyle23 @ Apr 7, 2008 -> 09:04 AM) aside from last year, ozzie has really gotten at least one utility player to over produce what was expected of him. in 2004 Juan Uribe went nuts, in 2005 he had Geoff blum and Willie Harris( you could even lump in Carl Everett and Pods here), in 2006 he had Pablo Ozuna. Last year he tried out Gonzalez, but it just didnt work. Mackowiak in 2006 as well.