ScottyDo

QUOTE (Cali @ Mar 12, 2012 -> 07:01 AM) I'm not crowning Detroit as World Champs. AL Central Champs for sure but I think one of Texas, NY, LA, or Boston will knock them out. The pitching after Verlander is suspect and even he wasn't the lights out CY/MVP he was during the regular season last postseason. I wanna add one more major issue from the Ozzie era I'm gonna be judging Robin on: Getting shut down by the following THREE types of pitchers on a regular basis*: - soft tossing lefty with a good change-up - rookie/first time pitcher facing the Sox - pitcher who has been getting killed by the rest of the league, baffles the Sox hitters (* = a pitcher can be any combination of these three types and possible all three in one. ) Now I understand a lot of these issues are on the players, but it's really up to Robin and his coaching staff to change the culture of the locker room and to say the right things to get these players to all stop falling into these annoying habits that frustrate us and cause them to lose baseball games they should win. Obviously you can't win them all but we the fans and I'm sure some if not all of the players know there have been far too many games lost in the last few seasons that they had no business losing. If the exact same sorts of things occur under both Ozzie and Robin, wouldn't you then suspect that the manager has nothing to do with these issues at all?

I would be okay with many Hawkisms, stories and strike zone criticisms if he kept them at moderate levels. Unfortunately, I can say "Don't stop now, boys!" after every single and he would likely owe me a coke.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 6, 2012 -> 10:59 AM) If prospects and particularly young pitching prospects are hugely overvalued...then that implies to me that the best way to get return on them is to trade young pitching to return moderately expensive but cost-controlled for a while talent...which is, I think, sorta what we've been doing. That might also be why some considered this offseason so bad, and why we didn't offload everyone on the books. If a rebuild means trading for young pitching, obviously you're not gonna extract that much from a market that overvalues pitching prospects. Similarly, it may just not be worth it to offload every player for such an overinflated return. If we had the luxury of waiting till the "prospect bubble" burst, that would have been smart, but unfortunately it doesn't work that way. I just don't know what type of return people were expecting this offseason given the price of pitching.

Two things: 1) They can succeed if their drafting markedly improves. Drafting gets you these premium chips at no cost, if your talent evaluation is good enough. As the hype increases, the value in your system inflates with an influx of "free" talent every year. 2) Whenever one type of player is overvalued, another must be comparatively undervalued. Obviously the undervalued group is not prospects. It's definitely not top tier free agents who are all getting contracts that will certainly be crippling relatively soon. It's not foreign players, since you have to pay Japamese teams tons of money just to talk to people and the Cuban players are getting many millions simply as prospects. That leaves either veteran free agents or mid-tier ones. Smart spending on players that didn't excel elsewhere for reasons you think are avoidable in Chicago is the name of the game. Low-cost gambles like Jermaine Dye are our best shot at smartly recovering. I would even say the Dunn signing was somewhat below market at the time, considering what the Tigers just paid for their DH (I know, the age factor and retrospect hurt that one, but I do think it was a smart signing). Also, once our bad contracts are off the books, perhaps we can afford to splurge on an excessively-priced free agent or two. However, drafting and clipping proverbial free agent coupons is the way I think we ought to proceed.

and it starts already: Melton: "I'd like to see out of spring training not so much a good performance but a good record", thus disagreeing with every human ever He did pronounce Viciedo correctly this time though

Oh my god I forgot about the yearly treat that is listening to Bill Melton suck! Off with ye, Score, I must hear the trainwreck!

QUOTE (fathom @ Mar 5, 2012 -> 05:01 PM) Let the Spring Training overreactions begin!! If first pitch = strike, then World Series. If first pitch = ball, then trade EVERYONE! Also, Ventura is a failure.

Baseball! At least until I have to get to work. It's definitely interesting to see a new regime in place. Regardless of low performance expectations, there is some inherent excitement in seeing how a new group operates.

I wish I had a job where when my boss asked for my business plan, I could say "I'm just focusing on being me". I'm really good at being me! It's pretty much the only thing I ever do.

QUOTE (HeGone33 @ Feb 29, 2012 -> 10:59 AM) The way I see it, Alex is just being honest about his scores......most amatuer golfers simply don't report accurate scores, giving putts here and there, not counting penalty strokes correctly, etc. The thing that's funny is most baseball players are good golfers because there is a great correlation to swinging a bat and a golf club.....so seeing how bad his swing was last year, it would make sense he's stuggling with golf that much. Actually, the best golfers are pitchers. There is a massive mechanical difference between horizontal and vertical swings, particularly the way your hips pivot and knees work within the swing. Pitchers don't have to worry about that, yet are often excellent athletes, so they tend to excel. Smoltz.

QUOTE (flippedoutpunk @ Feb 29, 2012 -> 09:41 AM) Billy Koch +10

QUOTE (Chet Kincaid @ Feb 28, 2012 -> 12:53 PM) Didn't Jose Contreras lose a bunch of weight during one offseason while he was here? I remember him struggling after that. At the time, I thought the weight loss backfired. Dunn couldn't possibly be worse than last year, so whatever he changes, I'm cool with it.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 22, 2012 -> 03:05 PM) I'd like to co-author this bill and get it signed into law.

QUOTE (docsox24 @ Feb 21, 2012 -> 05:17 PM) Same here. I put the odds at around 25-1, maybe worse. The offense is going to be bad. Not only are there a number of question marks as everyone has mentioned, but also there is no real upside from these guys. Only one player, Dayan, has legitimate upside above his projections. Whoever is in LF is going to be below average for that spot. Dunn is finished. Morel's ceiling is league average. I think only SS 1b and possibly RF will be above average. The pitching has nice depth but lacks the elite quality to overcome the bad offense. As a quick addendum, I think Beckham still falls into the category of "higher upside than projections". The likelihood that he reaches his potential is declining with each poor season, but I still think the highest possible level of his achievement remains intact. I also think Morel's upside might be a tick above league average. Also, there's no way Dunn's upside is below expectations this year. Soooo...maybe I disagree a little more than I thought I did when I started typing.

Bah! We need more Jews in baseball!

Also, KW gets his man! Again!

Hmm...Lillibridge primarily an IF backup then?

He mustache you a question

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 13, 2012 -> 05:55 PM) The sense that Crisp enters the equation is that the Oakland A's are now paying what, $50 million, for 2 CF's to cover the next 4 seasons? If you're Billy Beane and you've got $7 million to spend after signing Cespedes, would you spend it on a CF? I mean, it's definitely sub-optimal but still very manageable. Certainly not worth passing on a player you evaluate very highly, particularly if the price tag is somewhat lower than you expected. That said, I'm not terribly upset that the Sox didn't spring for this deal. It's not so much the dollars that bother me, it's more that 4 years probably isn't enough control for a very unproven commodity.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 13, 2012 -> 05:46 PM) If he can't come in as a plus-defense-CF, then this money is even riskier. I'm also not sure that the contention that "Crisp can't be a corner OF" makes a lot of sense...if you think Cespedes is an impact bat, you regain the on-field value lost by Crisp's transition by placing offense at a spot where it is not commonly found. Then, Crisp moves on in two years and you have Cespedes with a couple of seasons under his belt and, potentially, a more valuable corner player. I don't think Crisp enters the equation that much.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 13, 2012 -> 05:39 PM) One other bit. It has been suggested that Cespedes was destined for a corner spot anyway, so maybe it's not all that odd.

I also don't understand how you rectify "Kenny be damned for Rios, Peavy and Dunn!" with "Rios, Peavy and Dunn had fluky seasons last year!"

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Feb 12, 2012 -> 04:03 PM) It's reasonable to think that the replacements will be as good if not better than Buehrle, Santos, Pierre, and Quentin. Just how big of an aberration do you think last season was? Even with a marginal increase in production at all of those positions (which is FAR from a guarantee, particularly when you consider that Sale will wisely be forbidden from giving us 200+ innings), are we better than the Tigers? In the end, we weren't that close to them last year...especially not close enough for Sale, Thornton, De Aza and Viciedo to pick up the slack. Your contention is that we all predicted the Sox to contend last year, and the team is relatively similar to last year's, so we should be competitive this year. My (and most everyone else's) contention is that we were WRONG about last year -- very wrong -- and should adjust our expectations accordingly. In order to hold your position on things, you must think that last year's discrepancy between expectations and reality was all fluke, no substance. I'm only willing to admit to partial flukiness, and certainly not enough of it that we've filled in the gap between us and the Tigers.

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Feb 11, 2012 -> 01:54 PM) I kind of agree with you here. There is a lot of potential suck on the roster though, but some sort of Twinkie, small ball approach might work. I think if De Aza comes out of the gate blazing we'll have a really good shot; like Pods Syndrome in '05. Ha! Wouldn't THAT piss Ozzie off!

Duplicate post, sorry!