LVSoxFan

As far as the trade goes, I digress to the more knowledgeable here. But as for the Rowand-bashing, can I point out this? As somebody else noted: Rowand = hard worker, may mask his lesser talent (although I don't remember a lot of balls getting by him, he just doesn't glide to them as easily as Anderson) Anderson = lots of talent, but we're not seeing it (at the plate at least) Rowand = okay hitter, but can hit lefties Anderson = awful hitter So it's almost sort of a wash--do you want to hard worker with less talent, or the more talented fielder but who's not reaching his potential? Here's the one thing that everybody overlooks: Rowand was a clubhouse leader. That "spark" sure didn't seem to be on the bench in 2006 with him gone. Do we really think that sort of contribution should be disregarded? I'm not saying this trade is a good idea, but I am saying that I think it's off-base to suggest Rowand coming back is a bad thing. Just the opposite. If it's the right price.

The Sun-Times this morning quashed this rumor, for whatever that's worth.

I disagree with those who say A-Rod won't leave NY. IMO that guy can't WAIT to get out of NYC, where they have been BRUTAL to him this past season. Man, we're bad when our players suck, but they rode him every game. He comes here, he's an instant superstar and you know he'll get a royal welcome. AND we're a contender. It's not like he's going to KC. The question becomes, if this were to happen--where goes Uribe? Do you put him on third, or on the bench?

My baseball fanatic co-worker just came in from listening to some sports radio show and says the current deal being considered is Crede/Buehrle for A-Rod.

Ichiro would be a DREAM as our leadoff hitter. I have thought that for at least a year. I can't imagine what he would cost, though. Seeing that he's their #1. If we could get him, hell yeah. But I can't imagine what we'd have to give up to do that.

I have said for months now, keep the Five Alive. I don't see why we need to rebuild just because we didn't have 2005 all over again. On paper we were BETTER than 2005 going into '06, but as it turned out our starters had some bad years. I don't expect that to be the case next year. Just a hunch. I think there were some injuries and some fatigue but I'd pretty much keep the team intact except get a decent leadoff hitter and have a solution for Brian Anderson, should his hitting not improve. But I'm fine with standing pat with the starting five.

For what it's worth VAFan, you raise some excellent points. I think it's too early to be concerned, and let's not forget that on PAPER, last year we were better than 2005, and look how that turned out. But that was a good post.

Hey SoxPride56 I like your lineup; my only beef is: do we want the Brian Anderson experiment back? I'm not sure I can live through another season with the nine hole.

FWIW my baseball expert co-worker said today he thinks A-Rod to the White Sox makes perfect sense. He says you'd trade Crede and Garcia, put Fields at third and make Uribe a utility guy who can cover SS or second base. Me? I have no idea how we'll end up but thought I'd post his thoughts here.

Honestly I didn't pay attention enough to them to know: did they play smallball as well? I think so, but I don't know for sure...

Anyone notice how eerily similar their season was to ours last year? -Dominated division all season long, pitching being the main reason -The sure-thing clinch was in fact blown in the last month (where we almost blew it) after they cooled off -Lost first playoff game, then swept the next three (what we did in the ALCS) Sound familiar? Good for them.

Yeah I don't get the response here sometimes. Roeper is a huge Sox fan and writes about them all the time. Even a book. I don't think he wants Hawk gone necessarily; I think he was just poking fun at him.

Yeah heinie bird is awful and I agree about Mariotti.

Nothing's wrong with "Put it on the board...." that is CLASSIC. Regarding the "He gone" thing--that's exactly the point: he says "He gone!", the shirts say "He gone!" but on the PA it's "He's gone!" Why not just UPDATE the damn thing. BTW and me being an idiot for not knowing "crooked number"? My baseball expert co-worker thought it meant something entirely different, so I don't feel so bad. BTW the one I think we can ALL agree on is "Duck snort." Stooopid.

I don't mind Hawk at all. I do tire of some of them, but just did this for laughs. Hawk isn't going to change anything, and we know it. So does Roeper. The whole question is rhetorical. Just read it for laughs.

ED NOTE: THIS IS TONGUE-IN-CHEEK FOR LAUGHS. I DON'T MIND HAWK AT ALL. Roeper wrote about how Hawk needs to dump all the tired cliches when he's doing Sox broadcasts, and then listed them. I thought I/we should join on the fun. Here was my reply: Anyway, you were right on today about how the Hawkster needs to retire his now-tiresome cliches, not only because they ARE cliches, but also because they announce to the world: "Yes, I am considerably that much older than most of you. And I was obviously a redneck. Ergo I am tone-deaf to Generation X, Y, Z and everything after!" I think we can all agree that we will never tire of "You can put it on the booooooooooard, YES!" My all-time favorite home run call. That stays. Unless he wants to make it: "You can put it on my myspace paaaaaaaage.... YES!" Nah. That's not gonna work. Let's deal with the others: "Can o' corn": I had to have a co-worker explain what this meant to me. When I heard that explanation, my reply was: "Are you ***ing kidding me?" The Hawkeroo needs to realize that most of us didn't grow up going to the general store in town like he did, where the Prepperidge Farm guy pulled down a can with a long stick of a high shelf. We were waiting in line for a "PRICE CHECK!" because the UPC code smudged and the scanner wouldn't read it. REPLACEMENT SUGGESTION: For an easy pop-up, the Hawk should say "And... for making [insert player's salary here], he'd better ****ing catch that! We'll be right back!" "Suck 'em up, Joe": Is at Crede at third base or facing a line of shots on the bar a Hooters? This is lame. REPLACEMENT SUGGESTION: Nothing. Just shut up, Hawk. "Rack 'em up": Rack what up? Is this when the inning's over? Is this a bowling analogy, or billiards? REPLACEMENT SUGGESTION: How about: "The inning's over." Nobody likes being analogied to death. "He JUST missed it": This is what Hawk says about any ball that's, like, within 10 feet of the warning track even if the wind is blowing directly in from center at 30 MPH. This, along with "STRETCH," has been used so many times for balls that were EASILY fielded I don't even look up from my betting form when he blurts it out. Er, hey! I was just kiddin! "Grab some bench": I personally don't mind this one, and enjoy it as a taunt. But what if the guy just goes and stands in the dugout, without sitting down? These are the questions people are afraid to ask. "He gone!": aside from being grammatically unfortunate, there's an interesting contradiction here if you go to games at the park, where when they play it on the loudspeaker it's actually "He's gone." I never got that. REPLACEMENT SUGGESTION: Forget it. This one's never going away. Once it's on a t-shirt at the Cell, it's permanent. Just like my "BORCHARD RULES!" shirt. Right? "Big crooked number:" what the hell does this even mean? "Crooked number"? Does that mean "odd" number? Integer? What? What's crooked about it? Is the scoreboard askew? REPLACEMENT SUGGESTION: Just tell us the score and let's get to the unavoidable U.S. Cellular commercial already. "Cinch it up and hunker down": this sounds like a command given to prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and you we're not going to even go there... REPLACEMENT SUGGESTION: Sometimes it's better to just say nothing, if this is the best you can come up with. Yuck. "Be a two-strike hitter, 24": Can we all agree as Sox fans that at any given pitch we want you to hit the ball? So not only is this command redundant and stating the obvious, it's unnecessary, because... REPLACEMENT SUGGESTION: ...you're the broadcaster, Hawk. Let us do the cheering if this is the best you can come up with. Because "Duh!" insights like this are a dime a dozen, and nobody likes the guy who decided to supply the dime... "Chopper two-hopper": "Caught by the big bopper, who's got the runner by a whopper, and he nails him! PROPA!" File under: self-explanatory REPLACEMENT SUGGESTION: More like "deletion suggestion." This is the baseball equivalent of "You gellin?" "Right size, wrong shape": Huh? What kind of non-sequitir crap is this? It was a foul ball. Seeing that it was out of play there was nothing "right" about the size OR the shape REPLACEMENT SUGGESTIONS: Instant bet between him and D.J.if the person who catches it has a mustache. Make it a drinking game. "This ballgame is OVA": This is one of those weird Hawk-isms where he appears to be appropriating slang from some other subculture, but nobody knows what it is. Is it Southern? Italian? Urban slang? Just something he thought of and thought was funny? Ambiguity: it's a b****! REPLACEMENT SUGGESTION: If we lose: "F*ck! What is this, 2006?" If they win: "Hey Twins: put THIS in your inflatable dome and..." Think about that. Yuck! "The Carmines": what, is it 1957 already? Nobody under the age of sixty knows why you call them this. Ergo, stop calling them this. REPLACEMENT SUGGESTION: For accuracy purposes, call them "ESPN's Man-Crush" "The Twinkies": Hey, welcome to sixth grade! Here's your desk! REPLACEMENT SUGGESTION: "The team that's always up our ass." Hope this helps, Rich. I'll post these at soxtalk.com so we can get a movement going!

I hate the Twins. And you're right: so much for the Comedy Central. Hell even the Royals were giant-killers this year. Second half at least. Sure made us look bad.

Oops. Fixed. See? I've already mentally deleted the "2006 Sox" file...

...we went through it together. As I watch the Cubs organization implode and their "wait'll next year fans" line up for tix to next year's failure, I will always smile when I think of all the fans here who absolutely don't tolerate the Sox for a minute if they don't think the Sox are giving it their all. Interesting that the most active days here seem to be when we lose one, because everybody wants to vent about how we messed it up. Because Sox fans here are knowledgeable, involved and don't hesitate for a minute to call bullsheet when they see it. And as painful as this season was, it was certainly some comfort to be able to log on and vent with all of you, or to celebrate the few bright spots we did have this year. I also must tip my hat to those of you who do the game threads; many times while at work (no TVs here) I'd log on and follow the game here on the edge of my seat (LOL when guys will post things like "Oh CRAP!" but not say what's going on...). Those are a wildly entertaining way to follow a game. I also take note that everybody here seemed to know the season was over two, three weeks ago. I think Oakland was when we all knew that we were done. I enjoy the fact that so many people here can call things like that accurately. I also enjoy the fact that there are no sacred cows here with regard to the team--who hasn't been thrown under the bus here this season at one point or another? So to all of you here and the mods I say: thank you. Thank you for 2006. Even though the season was like a firecracker that never went off, 2006 on this board was outstanding. Me personallly? I am over-Soxed at this point because the second half was so damn stressful--not fun at all. I take it back: last year's September Swoon was bad, but not as bad as watching the slo-mo death of the Sox this year over a couple of month's time. I look forward to being a casual Bears fan for a while. My Sox jersey's are gonna be hangin now, unused, for six months. I look forward to washing away the bad taste of 2006 and not being in Detroit's rearview mirror for an entire season. Thank you, soxtalk.

VAFan has got the right idea, though, for sure. We NEED a leadoff speedster to get back to our 2005 gameplan. Is it just me, or did Gooch seem to hit better when Pods got on base, and struggle more this year when he wasn't? Either way, I want to see slap-hitters, baserunners and those kind of players in the lineup. I've had enough of home runs and feast-or-famine offense.

Does Buehrle have a lot of trade value after this awful season for him?

I think we can sum it all up like this, because we're really saying the same thing: the starters need to either step up or be replaced. The pen needs to be bolstered. HAVING DONE THAT, we need to have a starting lineup of "grinders" (remember that term?!) who can slap the ball rather than a core of heavy hitters surrounded by low-percentage, non-clutch hitters. See? We can all agree on something. In the end: fix the pitching first, because without it we're nothing. After that though, this offense cannot remain as-is. Unless you want another 2006.

Uh my "conclusion" was never that it was offense alone. As we've all beat to death here, this year's team was a failure almost across the board. But I am not backing down from my statement that the offense is too dependent on big bats and has abandoned the small ball approach a la Minnesota. Everybody can pile on the stats all they want but I watched damn near every game this year and saw it with my own eyes. Of COURSE we have issues all over but I was simply addressing this one. Because it's the most noticeable difference between us and the 2005 team besides the pitching not being as good. Let me put it more directly: I'll take Ichiro over Thome, thanks (in a pefect world). We already have enough home run hitters from the 2005 team. Everybody in the lineup this year had home run power. So when, in the first half or near the ASB, players interviewed were talking about how key Thome is to the offense, I thought: "Uh oh." In 2005 there wasn't a "key" individual. It was any man at any given moment. In 2006 teams realized if they could shut down the heart of the order, we were toast. But hey, don't take my word for it--Bill Melton said the same thing.

QUOTE(fathom @ Sep 27, 2006 -> 11:14 AM) We went over a 2 month stretch in the 2nd half last season where we didn't overcome a 2 run lead File under: missing the point

I appreciate the statistical homework, but please. Everybody can throw out as many stats as they want. Here's the stat that matters: "W". Take a nice long look at that one. Because for all the decimals and stats and figures, etc., it sure didn't amount to much, did it, compared to 2005? Who cares if we scored a lot of runs, if it didn't mean a win? Yeah, we scored a lot of runs, all right: and then would score zero the next day. Pull out all the stats you want, but I've seen this team before. In 2004. Only then instead of Thome, Konerko and Dye it was Maggs, Frank, Konerko and C. Lee.