balfanman

Phil Rogers is suggesting that Alexie Ramirez leadoff and have Juan Pierre bat ninth. I don't know, this might not be a bad idea, at least Alexie would get more AB's than Juan that way.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 28, 2011 -> 09:47 AM) The real problem with signing a Garcia is...what do you do with him if all of your other 5 starters are healthy. If you can get him on a deal where you can option him to the minors, that's perfect, but he ought to be able to find better than that just by going to NL clubs. The other place to put him is the bullpen...but I don't think that works that great either. I noted earlier how I don't think he's a good bullpen fit with his health issues and with his history of needing a long time to warm up. Beyond that though, there are only 2 guys in the bullpen who can effectively be sent down to the minors, Sale and Infante, and frankly, I expect that both of them would outpitch Freddy as bullpen guys this year. I'd deal with that problem on the lesser chance that it happens. As someone else said, what a good problem to have. If Freddy wants to come back here at a reasonable cost I could not possibly sign him fast enough!

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 28, 2011 -> 07:18 AM) Its never a real bad idea to have too many starters. If everyone is healthy and can pitch, they are pretty easy to get rid of. And I would say that the odds of everyone on this staff being healthy all year are slim and none. Once Peavy comes back there is a high probability that someone else will be even slightly injured (miss a start or 2) or need a break. Even Danks has blister problems flare up every now and then. If we really are "all in", Freddy is a great insurance policy to have and what a fantastic piece to have to rest guys and to help set up the rotation for the playoffs in September. All of our starters have proven to be pretty clutch at times, but I'm not sure that in a meaningful game in September that I wouldn't want "Big Game" Freddy on th mound to secure any playoff hopes.

QUOTE (justBLAZE @ Jan 20, 2011 -> 02:05 PM) Before we get too optimistic, remember that our manager is Ozzie Guillien. Ozzie on whether Morel is his starter at 3B: "That would be a slap in the face of Teahen." - Doug Padilla I, for one, would be tremendously dissapointed if Teahen starts over Morel. Even if Morel only hits ~230 or so.

QUOTE (Paint it Black @ Jan 6, 2011 -> 11:05 PM) I was thinking Teahen for Mike Trout. What does Soxtalk think? This poster thinks yhat you need to learn what color teal is. I could barely read your post.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Dec 25, 2010 -> 03:09 AM) A Nathan coming off major surgery. True, I don't thinkl that you can expect much out of Nathan until the end of 2011. Morneau may not last very long either, he's riskier than Quentin anymore.

QUOTE (ScottyDo @ Dec 22, 2010 -> 01:33 PM) If the Royals are really going to consider winning, they'll need to sign/trade for a few veteran pieces. I can count on one hand the number of teams in the last decade that really succeeded based on the successes of players who have been in the league It's my opinion that die-hard baseball fans are somewhat over-enamored with youth. It's important, but youth is mostly valuable because it is presumed to lead into maturity. You want guys who are good at 25 so they'll be great at 27-30. They could use 2011 to see what they have, wisely trade a few prospects (of which they have plenty) for some veteran help. and be right there in 2012.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Dec 22, 2010 -> 04:40 AM) It's going to be really interesting to see what happens with Pettite. He's figuratively got the Yankees by their collective nuts right now. I just can't see them going into '11 with two of Nova, Mitre or Brackman. Not with their expectations, payroll, ect. Cashman is doing the correct thing in acting all cool, calm and collected. But they put all their eggs in the Lee basket and now they're kinda f***ed. I think if Pettite retires they're going to make a move. And you best believe KW will be in the picture. Maybe not Danks. But Jackson or Floyd for sure. You may be right, but I have a hard time believeing that K.W. will deal an established starter if he is really all in this season. Pitchers are always 1 pitch away from being done and for that reason you can never have too much pitching.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Dec 22, 2010 -> 12:01 AM) Can't say "very" afraid until the young talent is up and producing. But I'm definitely, I guess, intrigued at what they could potentially do if even half of these guys pan out. But that won't be something to worry about for a couple years, at least. I don't think that they are going to be in contention for a dixision title this year either, but they could be in 2012 if their talent developes rapidly. I do believe that they are going to be enough of a pest though to cause other teams in the division some problems, so they could very well have a say in who does win the division. I don't think that you can take the Royals lightly any longer. I like the way that they are building that team.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Dec 21, 2010 -> 11:00 AM) Cashman seems pretty content on letting the season play out and see where they're at in July. I don't expect a move by them to be honest. That's cool too. Unless K.W. needs to dump salary, and his statements indicate that he doesn't. then he doesn't have to make a deal.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Dec 21, 2010 -> 10:45 AM) A Yankees fan from another forum brought up a possible deal for Edwin Jackson. Sox would get: David Robertson, Manny Banuelos, PTBNL That's one pretty good pitching prospect, a good bullpen arm, and $8.75 million of salary relief. Might not make a whole ton of sense for our rotation, but in terms of the entire team, it might not be the worst thing. I really am not familiar with these prospects at all, but Yankee prospects do tend to be more overhyped than most. This deal strikes me as maybe a fair deal, I don't know, but in this case we should not settle for a fair deal. The Yankees are the team that is in need here, more so than the Sox. If we are going to help another team out of a fairly deperate situation, especially a team that could wind up being a playoff opponent, then we should be in the drivers seat and make them overpay for a need. Balta may be right, they may not be too desperate until the season starts and they see what they have. In the A.L. East however, they could very easily lose the playoffs with a bad April. I think that they know that and would rather strike sooner than later. JMHO

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 21, 2010 -> 09:02 AM) I think the Sox would be open to it but I think the Yankees would seriously hesitate. Understandably so; but how desperate are they for pitching help. This is when you need to take advantage of them, not just help them.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 21, 2010 -> 08:38 AM) They might be more hesitant now that Crawford is off the market. I don't know who they'd replace him with. How about something like either Floyd or Jackson, + Pierre for Gardner, + 1 of their cathing prospects?

QUOTE (justBLAZE @ Dec 20, 2010 -> 04:13 PM) Tribune is wrong. $13M. Merkin/Official piece. Cowley/SunTimes piece. The Tribune has now changed it.

QUOTE (justBLAZE @ Dec 20, 2010 -> 02:08 PM) What was reported long ago is now official. Finally. Crain to the Sox 3-years, $13 mil. $4 mil in '11. $4.5 mil each in '12 and '13. - Doug Padilla The Tribune article said 14 million. I like the deal overall, but this makes it a little less palatable.

I voted for Crain. Pitchers are always a great risk for injury, but I believe Crain has a better shot at fulfilling the contract, simply due to keeping himself in better shape. Although I guess you could argue that round is a pretty good shape.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 14, 2010 -> 09:28 AM) No. Just no. Buehrle is better at some things - defending his position, pickoffs. MB is also a very baseball smart guy. But pretty much everything else, Lee is far above and beyond him. Its really no contest. But isn't the main objective to perform well enough to give his team a chance to win the game? I realize that number of wins is a flawed stat for a pitcher, but no matter how he does it, Buehrle usually finds a way to at least keep his team in the game. Again, I'm not stating that Lee isn't a better pitcher than Buehrle, especially at this point. All I'm saying is that he isn't so far behind that they cannot be in the same conversation. In fact, many have already stated that Lee isn't worth the contract that he's getting, I'll go so far as to state that over the next 5 years I would not be surprised to see that Buehrle is a more effective pitcher than Lee.

I don't want the Sox to trade Floyd for purely selfish reasons. My sister in law lives in Florida and one of her neighbors is Gavin Floyd. She actually got to know him a little just through nieghborly conversation, even though she had no idea who he was as a baseball player. She is not a sports fan at all but just happened to mention his name to me in a casual phone conversation a few months ago, evidently he helped her with something. Anyway, she was shocked that I knew who he was. She just thought that he was an extremely nice guy (his wife also) who happened to live close by. She said that Gavin is very active in her church in the off season. Since then she told him that her brother in law was a big White Sox fan and included an autographed Gavin Floyd baseball card in her Christmas card to us. She still doesn't really care since she is not into sports, but I may have to go visit her this winter and get to know her nieghbor a little !

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Dec 13, 2010 -> 09:49 PM) I doubt Buehrle would accept a trade to New York, Buehrle isn't anywhere close to the caliber of Cliff Lee, and Brett Gardner is really, really good. I don't think that Buehrle would accept a trade to the Yankees either, but I do have to disagree on the bolded statement. I don't know how you define "caliber", and for the record I don't know how I would define it either, but I think that Buehrle is at least in the same ballpark as Lee as a pitcher. Lee may have better stuff, I'm not real sure about that as I haven't watched Lee all that much, Buehrle has a much longer tract record, and both are a little risky for various reasons already discussed. At the moment it is very possible that Lee is a better overall pitcher, just not head and shoulders above Buehrle in my opinion. I look at it this way; If the White Sox (Buehrle starting} were playing Lees' team (Lee starting}, I would give the Sox a very good chance of winning with Buehrle outpitching Lee that day. If they played a 100 times, I would give the Sox a very good chance at winning at least 50 of them.

QUOTE (ScottyDo @ Dec 11, 2010 -> 03:40 PM) Yah, I agree. Based on the few times I saw him, his swing and eye looked good enough to succeed in MLB. And, unlike most of our upcoming prospects in recent years, all we're asking of him is good defense. He's replacing Teahen, unlike Anderson replacing Rowand, so I think the pressure's off and he can play a lot looser than the guys we've called up recently. Call it instinct, but I really like his chances of flashing some offense to go with that glove. On the whole I agree with you; however, as far as the batting ninth and just play good defense thing, the same thing was told to Brian Anderson in 2006. We thought that we had a fantastic lineup that year, but when the offense started out slow, as usual for this team, there was pressure put on Anderson to produce offensively as well. We all know how that turned out. The absolute worst thing that can happen to Morel this year is that his teamates start out slow offensively.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Dec 10, 2010 -> 06:22 PM) If this means a lot of Mark Teahen and I think it does mean that, then that is simply not good. I mean if CQ is gone, Teahen will play a ton. I think that's a fact, jack. If you trade Quentin and then sign Jones, a Teahan / Jones platoon wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

QUOTE (Lillian @ Dec 9, 2010 -> 03:48 PM) Well, the people on this forum do seem to be more rational, and considerably more polite. Regarding Pierre, I don't think that he is awful, but I did argue that his OBP is not high enough for a guy who doesn't get any Xtra basehits, or even drive the ball. The way I look at it, if he led off every time he came up, his production might be acceptable. The problem is that he's only guaranteed to lead off once per game. When he comes to the plate with guys on base, his ability to steal bases is irrelevant. How many times has he come to the plate with a guy on second and no out, or on third with less than two outs? He can't be counted on to even hit a sacrifice fly, as that's further than he's capable of hitting a baseball. As he ages, and loses a step, he is losing his ability to get all of those infield hits, that he got when he was younger. When you combine that with his weak arm, I'm just not impressed with his skill set. But wow, you'd think that I was a complete idiot for even suggesting that the Sox might try to get a better hitter, and defender, to play either RF or CF, so that Carlos could move to left, where he is less of a defensive liability. When I said that Rios could then be a candidate to lead off, by default, as no one else can really steal bases, the posters were just merciless. "Why do I want to make Rios a lead off hitter". I simply figured that he was the best option to do so, if the rest of the line up consisted of something like: Vizquel Konerko Dunn Quentin Drew Ramirez A. J. Beckham Not that we could get, or even afford J. D. Drew, but I thought that would be a great lineup, and Rios would fit nicely at the top. Geez, you can't believe the "hate". A few even suggested that if we were able to acquire someone like Drew, that the Sox should dump Quentin for a couple relievers, and keep Pierre. That is hard for me to comprehend. Pierre is not likely to ever come back to haunt you, but moving Carlos certainly could. What is disturbing is that these guys don't simply disagree, they want to make you out to be an idiot if you disagree with them. Maybe you're right about not posting there anymore. Thanks for being fair minded, and reasonable. It's refreshing. I agree that Soxtalk is way more informative about the Sox, even though I do monitor WSI and even post there occaisionally. In fact. I was one of them who reponded to you earlier today Lillian. I generally agree with a lot of what you post, although I'm not so against Jaun Pierre. I think Pierre is an okay leftfielder and we could sure do a lot worse. I would much rather have Pierre in our outfield than Quentin, unless Quentin reverts back to his 2008 form. People need to realize that everyone on here has an opinion and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Most opinions you can't prove wrong one way or the other until way after the fact, but there are those who vehemently insist on proving you wrong, no matter what. Those are the ones who bother me. Hopefully, I can disagree with someone and still respect their opinion. And, of course, this is JMHO on this !

Why left field for Viciedo, with that arm I would rather he learn right field?

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Dec 7, 2010 -> 11:55 PM) Does anyone know where to get Buehrlot or Don Cooper's wine? Looking for a Christmas gift. I heard that K.W. has a vintage wine that you can get for 50 cents, although I hear it's hard to find this year!

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Dec 8, 2010 -> 08:37 AM) The rumors still exist of a 7-year offer for Cliff Lee, but the known teams gunning for him deny such an offer. I would think that one or more of those teams are not being truthful, but I wonder if there's a mystery team out there that has made a 7-year offer. And if so, who could it be? Is there any possibility that the Twins could be that "mystery team"?