Gregory Pratt

Yeah? So does the organization. /green Really, they're right. I already believe this organization mediocre -- I'd riot if it came out that they make decisions based on message board posts. I already believe that they brought Podsednik back because 1. it was cheaper than any alternative 2. it would bring the twelve year old girls in.

He's clearly just throwing crap on the wall.

Nothing is ever set. Joba, Hughes, Kennedy and Wang can very easily implode tomorrow. But yes, they do have a nice young assembly.

I don't think Steve is advocating for a trade of Jenks for, say, Coco Crisp. He's just saying that if you get a really, really good deal, you take it, and I definitely agree. But I don't think that deal is coming. (Something like the Colon trade.)

Rodriguez was guaranteed to opt out unless the Yankees give him some absurd deal. I can't believe the bulls*** Boras is going off about re: Rodriguez.

Hi. Tom House claimed that he was juicing in the 1970s. Steroids, HGH, everything. Claimed that they gobbled it up like it were nothing. I've read somewhere that his claims are highly unlikely because of a variety of factors. The problem is, I can't recall them and I'm having trouble finding them. Can anybody tell me why House' claim is hard to believe? I believe it has something to do with HGH/steroids not really being in popular use at the time and not really being well-known, refined, etc. etc. Do enlighten me.

I guess we aren't going to have that debate?

QUOTE(Chombi and the Fungi @ Oct 9, 2007 -> 07:36 PM) One thing that I am twisted about is this...Let's say we do this deal. Yes, it makes our team younger and potentially better down the road. If we add some quality FA's, then maybe it makes us better now. If we don't though, I can't see this team being better. I can see them having a better record next season as we all can agree this season seems to have been a fluke, but overall I can't see this team being better. The part that is bothering me through all of this is what was above, as that was more of an outline. It is that our front office seems to have no clue what they are doing. Now, Maybe the value they were getting at the deadline for some of these guys wasn't as good but either way the resigning of Dye just kills me. He of everyone seems he will age the worst. He is back to being injury prone and he plays a demanding position for an old guy. Why would we resign instead of dealing him for prospects, or letting him go for the draft picks? I don't think this team was a fluke.

QUOTE(Dick Allen @ Oct 9, 2007 -> 05:47 PM) The White Sox way appears to be calling kids up who have no idea how to steal bases if they can run. They have no idea how to run the bases. They don't know where to throw the ball. Situational hitting is new. Bunting is like an organic chemistry class.They apparently haven't been told of a cut-off man yet. Then what the Sox do, is get a group of coaches to help teach them these things at the major league level. When that doesn't work, the coach that has been with the team the fewest seasons gets let go, and another is brought into his place. Hey...we do it our way! /Kenny Raiders.

For what it's worth, I'm wary of Figgins who is a good overall player but I don't know how well he'd do here, and I hope we don't overpay for someone like him, as we almost did with Garland/Erstad years ago.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Oct 9, 2007 -> 06:07 PM) And don't forget to thank Paulie for that sweet hometown discount and being a loyal player . . . Umm, that didn't really happen. He didn't give up much to stay here.

QUOTE(Chisoxfn @ Oct 9, 2007 -> 05:45 PM) I love him too, but he was not very good down the stretch and I'm a bit concerned about him slowing down drastically due to being drastically overworked for the past couple seasons. That said, if he's healthy he's a stud reliever. He's fine, as far as I've heard it was just mechanics. It would suck if we dealt for him and he weren't half the man he has been!

QUOTE(Dick Allen @ Oct 9, 2007 -> 05:39 PM) He came back at the end. He was having mechanical issues. He would be the second best pitcher in the bullpen by far if KW acquired him. I absolutely love Scot Shields.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Oct 9, 2007 -> 05:11 PM) So did the Cubs. The Cubs grabbed him with their rule 5 draft slot and then dealt him to Cinci for some potatoes or something like that. TB had him. Didn't want him. Cubs took him. Cubs then sold him to Cinci for ten grand, I believe.

QUOTE(RME JICO @ Oct 9, 2007 -> 05:23 PM) The Sox would have to at least get a top level prospect (Wood?) to make it close. If you assume you are letting go a declining Konerko, and Garland who has had one good year in the last 6; while at the same time receiving a leadoff CF who hit .330 this year, a 1B who had a .840 OPS, and a solid Setup man - its not that bad. At the same time you are cutting a ton of locked in salary to use elsewhere. You also just got a lot younger. A Shields-Jenks combo at the end of the game would be sweet. Also, a leadoff hitter with a .393 OBP and 41 SB would be nice to see. It is close, but the Sox would need a high level prospect. I concur. I'd love it.

A few days ago they were talking on TBS about organizations that do baseball a certain way -- I believe they mentioned the Angels and the Twins, and I would add the Braves, offhand, to organizations that stress fundamentals from the lowest depths of the system all the way to the top, indoctrinating their players from the beginning. Clearly these organizations value defense, fundamental baserunning, opposite field hitting, good approaches at the plate, etc. etc. And it got me thinking: do the White Sox have a system? A White Sox way? I know some, including good friends of mine, argue in defense of Greg Walker by saying, "I'm sure he's the one who tells the hitters to close their eyes and swing as hard as they can." It's a good point, no? But then you look at our system, from the minor leagues up, and you think about our defenders, our hitters, our baserunning -- it's abysmal, and so I really wonder how coherent our organization is. Do we stress things from the beginning all the way to the top? If we do, if we really do, putting much emphasis on these things, then why do we suck so bad at most of them? Why are we now and have for the longest time a terrible offensive team beyond the homerun? Do players tune out the coaches or are they never taught? Whichever it is is an unhappy reality, right? I mean, if players don't listen, then what does that say about them? If our coaches aren't competent, what does that say? I just wish I didn't have to associate my team's system with softball. I guess I'm happy with the Buddy Bell signing, as a result, but only if it's a serious beginning to a complete and drastic overhaul of the way this organization does things. I don't have high hopes, as I question this organization's leadership, but we'll see.

I like Bell. It's a good step to have someone new instructing. Good show1

Well, Favre is one of the greatest QBs of all-time and he might very well be the toughest to ever play the game, so he deserves plenty of praise and admiration, not just from announcers and fans but from, say, players like, oh, even TO.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Oct 9, 2007 -> 12:44 PM) This was also interesting... http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/189700.php The US might have had the video a day before this happened... Yes, I saw that and was about to post it. Very good.

QUOTE(Rex Kicka** @ Oct 9, 2007 -> 12:41 PM) Now that I live in NJ, my friends at home think I've become a New York type fan - because we have a horrible season and I want Ozzie to get the s*** can for it. In New York, you have a case where you have a manager who gets his team to the playoffs for over a decade consistently, gets them several rings to boot. He gets handed a super high payroll of players who seem to break down with injuries constantly, and yet his teams find a way to make it to the postseason. It seems that for the last 2/3 of the season, most of the time there was one big element missing from the Yankee game. The starting pitching was horrible, or the offense fell asleep, or the bullpen suddenly got shaky - and yet the Yanks found a way to win. That has to come, at least partially, from the manager. I don't think Torre is overrated. I think he might be overpaid. And the rumor is, that a lot of the free agents that the Yankees will be dealing with this offseason, aren't terribly interested in a Torre-less New York team next year. This isn't College ball. If the Yankees want you, and will throw their money at you, you're going to NY.

I look forward to an official sequence in the coming days.

Rivera isn't going anywhere, and he will not go to Boston. He is not Johnny Damon. He is not Wade Boggs. He'd retire before he did that, I'm sure, and he said as much.

Al Qaeda's Internet communications system has suddenly gone dark to American intelligence after the leak of Osama bin Laden's September 11 speech inadvertently disclosed the fact that we had penetrated the enemy's system. The intelligence blunder started with what appeared at the time as an American intelligence victory, namely that the federal government had intercepted, a full four days before it was to be aired, a video of Osama bin Laden's first appearance in three years in a video address marking the sixth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. On the morning of September 7, the Web site of ABC News posted excerpts from the speech. But the disclosure from ABC and later other news organizations tipped off Qaeda's internal security division that the organization's Internet communications system, known among American intelligence analysts as Obelisk, was compromised. This network of Web sites serves not only as the distribution system for the videos produced by Al Qaeda's production company, As-Sahab, but also as the equivalent of a corporate intranet, dealing with such mundane matters as expense reporting and clerical memos to mid- and lower-level Qaeda operatives throughout the world. While intranets are usually based on servers in a discrete physical location, Obelisk is a series of sites all over the Web, often with fake names, in some cases sites that are not even known by their proprietors to have been hacked by Al Qaeda. One intelligence officer who requested anonymity said in an interview last week that the intelligence community watched in real time the shutdown of the Obelisk system. America's Obelisk watchers even saw the order to shut down the system delivered from Qaeda's internal security to a team of technical workers in Malaysia. That was the last internal message America's intelligence community saw. "We saw the whole thing shut down because of this leak," the official said. "We lost an important keyhole into the enemy." By Friday evening, one of the key sets of sites in the Obelisk network, the Ekhlaas forum, was back on line. The Ekhlaas forum is a password-protected message board used by Qaeda for recruitment, propaganda dissemination, and as one of the entrance ways into Obelisk for those operatives whose user names are granted permission. Many of the other Obelisk sites are now offline and presumably moved to new secret locations on the World Wide Web. The founder of a Web site known as clandestineradio.com, Nick Grace, tracked the shutdown of Qaeda's Obelisk system in real time. "It was both unprecedented and chilling from the perspective of a Web techie. The discipline and coordination to take the entire system down involving multiple Web servers, hundreds of user names and passwords, is an astounding feat, especially that it was done within minutes," Mr. Grace said yesterday. The head of the SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that monitors Jihadi Web sites and provides information to subscribers, Rita Katz, said she personally provided the video on September 7 to the deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter. Ms. Katz yesterday said, "We shared a copy of the transcript and the video with the U.S. government, to Michael Leiter, with the request specifically that it was important to keep the subject secret. Then the video was leaked out. An investigation into who downloaded the video from our server indicated that several computers with IP addresses were registered to government agencies." Yesterday a spokesman for the National Counterterrorism Center, Carl Kropf, denied the accusation that it was responsible for the leak. "That's just absolutely wrong. The allegation and the accusation that we did that is unfounded," he said. The spokesman for the director of national intelligence, Ross Feinstein, yesterday also denied the leak allegation. "The intelligence community and the ODNI senior leadership did not leak this video to the media," he said. Ms. Katz said, "The government leak damaged our investigation into Al Qaeda's network. Techniques and sources that took years to develop became ineffective. As a result of the leak Al Qaeda changed their methods." Ms. Katz said she also lost potential revenue. A former counterterrorism official, Roger Cressey, said, "If any of this was leaked for any reasons, especially political, that is just unconscionable." Mr. Cressey added that the work that was lost by burrowing into Qaeda's Internet system was far more valuable than any benefit that was gained by short-circuiting Osama bin Laden's video to the public. While Al Qaeda still uses human couriers to move its most important messages between senior leaders and what is known as a Hawala network of lenders throughout the world to move interest-free money, more and more of the organization's communication happens in cyber space. "While the traditional courier based networks can offer security and anonymity, the same can be had on the Internet. It is clear in recent years if you look at their information operations and explosion of Al Qaeda related Web sites and Web activities, the Internet has taken a primary role in their communications both externally and internally," Mr. Grace said.

Good article.

Is Lovie Smith a "top two" coach in all of football again because he beat Green Bay at Green Bay?