upnorthsox

You can never have too many good arms. That said, I don't see us getting him because there's just too many teams in the hunt for a closer. I would love to get Rob Mackowiak though, Mackowiak and Mesa for Harris, Cotts, Perez, and Borchard/Adkins, ahhh it's great to daydream on a Monday morning.

QUOTE(Leonard Zelig @ May 9, 2005 -> 02:36 PM) Only the starting position players are voted in. Boston's manager will select the reserves. Well then that opens up about 5 Yankee spots on the roster.

QUOTE(LosMediasBlancas @ May 9, 2005 -> 02:29 PM) I agree, the more the merrier, I'm just saying expect a large number of Cub fan, pro Sammy, anti Sox garbage to be there. But it didn't start that way with the scrub fans, most were going there to boo him. Now with the Sox en fuego and the Cubs El joke-o some of those jeers will to to cheers. Here's hoping they have little to cheer about.

If his ST game was any indication I wouldn't expect much out of Robin, hopefully someone sent him a tape of that game with a critque for him to work on.

QUOTE(SEALgep @ May 7, 2005 -> 02:34 PM) El Duque has been hurt, but prior to his signing, he was said to have one of the cleaner looking arms KW has seen. Isn't it possible that his last surgery and proper rehab has made his arm what it used to be, when he was throwing 130+ pitch counts in Cuba. As it has been pointed out, the more you throw, the stronger you get. If he indeed is healthy, I don't see why he can't throw 115 pitches a game, granted not every game, but enough to not be overly concerned. Guys use to do it all the time back in the day, and Hernandez is part of that mold IMO. But we're talking about a 40 yr old here, your playing with fire if you think he can be used like a 30 yr old. His arm now has been "hardened up", now they need to dial it back some to make it last.

QUOTE(whitesoxfan101 @ May 7, 2005 -> 04:10 AM) I don't get you haters....I personally love DJ. He is just hysterical, being proven even more lately as he's got to talk more as the PBP guy, and his home run call has me dying laugh everytime. I just don't get you DJ lovers....................

QUOTE(Jabroni @ May 7, 2005 -> 03:38 AM) WhiteSox.com has DJ's homerun calls for Corey Koskie and Jermaine Dye. Corey Koskie's homerun: "Uh-oh... 1 to 1." Jermaine Dye's homerun: "WAAAYYY BACK... UHHH-OHHHHHH... YES!" I think you're a little off with the caps for Dye's HR, it didn't have near that much enthusiasm.

QUOTE(beck72 @ May 7, 2005 -> 12:06 PM) Agreed. Also, AJ being a "goofball". On Tv last night, they showed AJ, laughing putting away Konerko's ball breaking his O-for streak, like they would for a rookie getting his first hit. Buehrle and other guys were laughing along. A few minutes later, AJ comes through in the clutch. The Sox in recent years have had guys who take themselves too seriously, or are too hard on themselves when they screw up [PK, Crede, Garland come to mind]. Whether it's AJ's influence or not [he's a big part of it no doubt], the atmosphere around the sox is very loose. Aj's game seems to be "laugh at yourself, have fun, play the game right". Speaking of, did you see him laughing at himself when he did the splits trying to get out of the way of that inside pitch? Classic!

Even if 90 ends up being enough you don't want to limp into the playoffs having played .500 ball the final 3/4 of the season.

QUOTE(JimH @ May 7, 2005 -> 01:26 PM) The Pabst Blue Ribbon crowd is more like it. Well you can take the boy out of the trailer but you can't take the trash out of the..................

QUOTE(TLAK @ May 7, 2005 -> 12:57 PM) I have a theory on why Maryotti, Kruk, Reynolds, Phillips etal don’t know what to make of the White Sox. They really don’t report on baseball, they report on baseball stars. Sort of like these ‘People’ celebrity shows. They tell you everything about an actress’s private life and her gowns but nothing about her work. Garland’s performance has been remarkable, Iguchi’s start is certainly of interest but, on the whole, this is a group of players that are just doing their job everyday. The Sox winning run might come on a ground out in the 5th. They win the game by relentlessly making the plays for 9 innings. ESPN focuses on hero plays, like a walk off homer, to exclusion of the rest of the game. The strength of these White Sox is the rest of the game. Very good baseball, but not so good as a video clip. There is just not a lot of glitter to this team for these guys to grab hold of. No one play where a writer can wax poetic on a given player’s moral fiber. The media doesn’t know how to write about this or condense it into a 20-second clip. So they either skip the Sox or talk about Ozzie. With the White Sox the team is the star, not a couple of guys. I think you're spot on with your assessment, there are though guys on this team who can/will carry it from time to time as it's a long season. Personally I hope we don't get the attention that the Yankmees/Red Sox/Scrubs get as that gets pretty boring but I also don't want to "fly under the radar" like some around here suggest either. Just give our highlights/headlines the top/near top billing that a 1st place team deserves and we should be satisfied.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ May 6, 2005 -> 02:40 PM) Another good one is that we just have to go a little of .500 the rest of the way to win 90 games, very, very achieveable. Although I don't trust Dayn Perry's judgement very much at all. 90 wins wouldn't have got it done for us in '04 or '03 or '02 or ........ In fact you'd have to go back to '98 for that. I'm guessing it will take close to 100 to win it this yr with the 2nd place team getting the WC with high/mid 90's.

QUOTE(LosMediasBlancas @ May 6, 2005 -> 01:59 PM) I don't have the numbers to back it up, but it seems like for the past few years it was the complete opposite. If we were down going into the 7th, you could leave the park or turn the tv off. I believe you were thinking of '02 when we were god awful after the 7th, we were much better the last 2 yrs though.

Toronto doesn't scare me without Delgado, if you pitch around Wells they aren't so tough. We miss Halladay, Bush and Lilly suck, and we'll see how the rookie Chacin does going up against an ace while he's trying to avoid a sweep at home. I think he'll choke. The D-Rays have a nice get on base and run team but their pitching staff sucks so bad that if we can't break out the whooping sticks on them then this month+ has been a mirage. They have little power to speak of also. The O's are going to score some runs, but if you can keep them in the park you can outpitch them. The crowd will also be a factor and could be worth one win. I say Gar sets the tone in game 1 and we take 3 of 4. Texas just flat out scares me, if we split with them on the home and home I'll be happy. I never worry about beating the scrubs, it's a Sox thing. The battle of the roations with the Angels should be fun, too bad the 4 game set is out west where I'd be happy to split. Depending on how long we can ride this current win streak I think we have a shot at winning 20 this month, even with the better offenses we're facing.

QUOTE(Punch and Judy Garland @ May 6, 2005 -> 03:08 AM) Qwerty, I always find it funny when fans complain that they know more about their team than the national media does. Of course. I mean, if someone invests 20 hours a week watching gmaes and then 10 hours a week reading about them in the paper and fansites, and then 15 hours a week watching sports talk radio, well you get the picture. No wonder my car insurance is so high, hey keep your eyes on the road the radio isn't going anywhere.

QUOTE(bmags @ May 6, 2005 -> 03:46 AM) sometimes i think he should just get rid of the stretch...forget about the men on base ala maddux...i think hes got good enough stuff to know he can get out of any jam I love this point and it happened again yesterday in the 7th when he walked the guy right after a man got on base. Pick up the pace and F' the stretch, I know I can live with guys running on him if he gets the guy out at the plate.

QUOTE(JimH @ May 6, 2005 -> 01:25 AM) Willie Harris at SS, Jamie Burke at 3B, Wilson Valdez at both. That was the primary competition. Also ... KW was on the radio the other day, talking about how important it is to stick with the personnel decisions made in March, to give it a chance to play out. None of the bench guys they took north have underperformed, or at least the infield guys. If there's a guy who's on the bubble, I would say Gload. Ozzie seems to like Timo's LH bat off the bench and other guys have played a little 1B, namely Widger and of course Ozuna. And now they have Burke for the time being, who will arguably stay until Thomas comes back. Valdez was the name I wasn't coming up with. As I said, it's not a pressing issue. IMO Timo is on the bubble for when Frank comes back, Burke goes back down when Willie comes back Monday.

QUOTE(southsider17 @ May 6, 2005 -> 12:45 AM) I didn't hear anything about this. What's the story? I'd just be paraphrasing at this point but the jist was that the Sox clubhouse didn't square with his or his family's christian beliefs.

I don't recall, what were his other options?

QUOTE(Punch and Judy Garland @ May 6, 2005 -> 12:23 AM) Apparently not with the guy that matters though. I think that if we are going to contend for a World Series then we'll need another veteran like Graffs. Now, I would understand wanting Ozuna over Graffanino but you'd have a hard time convincing me that you'd rather have Pablo in a pressure packed playoff game Yeah, that's why I said IMO but I'd also say he didn't endear himself to some of his former teammates on the way out. I definitely agree that Ozuna is a spot that can be upgraded esp. with someone with playoff experience.

I don't mind upgrading Ozuna but not with that bible thumper, IMO he burned bridges on the way out. There's other ute guys out there and it's not a pressing issue.

Anything at this point would be a BP arm, Gordon is horrible this yr(might be done), same with Quantrill though he might be worth the risk, Karsay you could have for nothing now, and then there's Rivera but with his contract I just don't see it unless the Boss picks up a huge chunk and quite frankly the market for a closer right now is packed. The only other thing I'd think about(realistically) is Womak but at this point I'm happy with Ozuna.

QUOTE(qwerty @ May 4, 2005 -> 10:51 AM) The sox are at $75,228,000 this year. Last year it was $65,212,500. And where did you come up with the $65 mil? I had always known it to end up closer to $70-71 mil

QUOTE(qwerty @ May 4, 2005 -> 05:05 AM) Almost ten million exactly. We are currently 13th i believe in pay roll. I come up with $81,987,500 for last yr(salaries are at bottom of page): http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CHW/2004.shtml Are you saying our payroll is about $92 mil right now?

QUOTE(Wedge @ May 2, 2005 -> 08:43 PM) That's very good information. If I could track down a list of the number of runs we scored last year, I could calculate the standard deviation, which is a measurement of the consistency of a statistic. Our runs/game for last season might be higher, but there was a high level of variance (the bimodal syndrome: score 16 one day, then score 0, 2, 0, 1 ,6, 4 for the rest of the week) that I think most people sense instinctively. Something more telling might be this: in 2004 and 2005 we scored 5+ runs in a game at roughly the same rate (just a tad under 50% in both cases). I'm pretty sure there's a pretty high relation of scoring 5 runs and winning games (I'd guess offhand if you score 5+ runs, you are 60% likely to win a game) . In April 2005 when we scored more than 5 runs(8) we were 5-3(.625) In April 2004 when we scored more than 5 runs(11) we were 8-3(.720) In the same vein, when we've given up more than 5 runs(and thus need more offense) In April 2005 when we gave up more than 5 runs(3) we were 0-3(.000) In April 2004 when we gave up more than 5 runs(5) we were 2-3(.400) Also: In games we've scored 3 or less runs and thus need pitching to win: In April 2005 - 8 times - 5-3 In April 2004 - 4 times - 1-3