Dick Allen

QUOTE (Soxfest @ Sep 15, 2013 -> 04:14 PM) Can Henry Melton be any more MIA in 2 weeks? 2 tackles, 1 tackle assist and no pass rush at all. Between him and Peppers, you don't even know if they are active for the game. This Bears team has more weapons on offense than they have had since the league starting throwing more than 15 passes a game.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Sep 15, 2013 -> 11:29 AM) There maybe no team that is interested in Upton ay half price. I don't know. Define top prospect by the way? A prospect that will more than likely help the White Sox contend. Plus a guy a reasonable owner wouldn' t have his GM committed for even suggesting they spend $30 million to acquire. Not a guy you would get for 2 months of Matt Thornton.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Sep 14, 2013 -> 01:08 PM) What are the expectations for Abreu, I have no idea. Besides that, are 3-5 in the rotation going to get better because they absolutely have to. After all that, the pen is an issue as well. If you have no idea wha the expectations are for Abreu, why did you post this: As I've detailed before, there quite possibly is a team out there that would trade for Upton if his price tag were $25-$30M over 4 years. Take the $30M hit on the payroll over the next two years and the prospect. The Braves get rid of the entire contract, the team that traded for Upton gets what it wants, and the Sox basically buy a prospect while keeping their long-term financial flexibility. Better than Abreu for 4-years? I would say yes. And what team is interested in Upton and what type of prospect can you "buy" for $30 million? C'mon Marty, provide specifics or quit trolling. And a team is going to take on $30 million of Uptons contract AND give you a top prospect back? If you are that high, you need rehab.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Sep 14, 2013 -> 11:23 AM) It's important for you to have safety in numbers, be part of a pack. Sad really. I stole an idea from Dan Bernstein, omg. First prove it, second who gives on damn? The thread is on this board from months ago. That's the proof. And if no one should give a damn, why don't you just admit you are bringing up old threads because you want to argue and bait?

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Sep 14, 2013 -> 11:17 AM) Now its the Indians rebuild you are trumpeting. Good old after-the-fact Dick Allen strikes again. Just showing you an example of something you said doesn't happen.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Sep 14, 2013 -> 11:17 AM) Now its the Indians rebuild you are trumpeting. Good old after-the-fact Dick Allen strikes again. Trolling, trolling, trolling Marty is trolling Rawhide. Josh Hamilton, Andre Eithier, now BJ Upton. Marty couldn't GM a lemonade stand.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Sep 14, 2013 -> 11:14 AM) Dick Allen I didn't expect any different from you. You have shown zero ability to think outside the box. Keep loving that Blue Jays rebuild fella ROFL. Not a bad idea, but they had a ton of injuries. BJ Upton. Marty is ridiculous. But I won't take the bait and fight you anymore on this. The others all see what you are doing. BTW, you aren't thinking outside the box. You stole this from Dan Bernstein.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Sep 14, 2013 -> 10:55 AM) The problem is this team itself. How do you go from losing 100 games to contending buying free agents. See 2012 Cleveland Indians.

Marty is just trolling again. Dan Berstein brought up this concept of teams dumping bad contracts and sending along prospects as bait. He was also mentioning salary caps and other things thinking MLB is the NBA. Teams don't give up top prospects unless they are desperate. Teams also get an additional $25 million to play with starting this offseason. There is not one example of a team giving up a top prospect for taking on a bad contract. Then BJ Upton is mentioned. He is owed $60 million the next 4 years. What prospect, even if the Braves were so desperate to get rid of Upton, do they have that is worth that price? It isn't going to happen. The board panned the thought, Marty decided to bring it back for arguments. He is covering his bases though. He did mention a couple of months ago, the "heavy lifting" of a rebuild was done. He also mentioned if a rebuild was done "correctly" it could be accomplished in 2 years. Now he is saying 2016. No matter what happens, he will tell everyone he was the first to tell you what was going to happen. Just read his posts for comedy.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Sep 13, 2013 -> 01:40 PM) I thought that was because Youk was on the team? That was a byproduct. I don't know if Youk would have sat out the game or not, but he was limping to the finish line at that point last season.

Santiago is the only pitcher I know who can pitch 1 inning, give up 2 baserunners and no runs and still throw 31 pitches.

QUOTE (lasttriptotulsa @ Sep 13, 2013 -> 01:18 PM) No, but they've done it in years past for the same reason. Maybe Jerry just has a lot of respect for the Jewish players/fans and wants the game to be done so they honor the holiday correctly. I think last year was scheduled to be played at night and they either changed it, or made sure it was a day game this season so the Jewish fans could participate.Last year, it was an important game. This year....not so much, at least for the home team.

I wonder if JR tried to get today's game rescheduled to night game so he would have a legit excuse not to watch.

The Sox also took a big chance with Joe Borchard. They gave him a lot of money at the time. He looked great as a 21-23 year old minor leaguer, except for the strikeouts his numbers were outstanding. Supposedly a great guy and hard worker as well. Total bust. Of course he was turned into Thornton, so not nearly a total loss.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 10, 2013 -> 12:56 PM) I think this nails it. You go for both, whichever presents the best value at that pick, whichever it may be. But the development piece needs to succeed either way, and for hitters, that has been a failure for years now. Caveat; I think you may see a few hitters make impacts in the next year or two. Maybe. I talked to a scout a few weeks ago down in NC, and he said something that was alarming to me. We were discussing various prospects, and I asked about one guy who had consistently high OBP numbers and walks... scout says yeah, but how many runs did he score? I said, I really don't know off hand. He said, well, if he doesn't score runs, he doesn't help me. There is a flaw in that logic, from my perspective. Multiple flaws, really. I fear some of the pro scouts (not the ones who look for draft picks, the ones who analyze the current minor leaguers) may have an old school mindset, one set in the idea of generating runs. That is ultimately what you want in the majors of course, but I don't think looking at minor leaguers through that lens is the right approach. Just my opinion. I think it depends on the player you were talking about. All walks are not created equal. If it's a slow guy where it's going to take 3 hits to score him, or a really, really poor baserunner, a walk isn't worth as much as it is if the guy is Rickey Henderson JR. A walk also isn't worth as much if you don't have good hitters behind him, but that is the job of the scouts, GM, organization to make sure they do. So that would be on them and not the player IMO.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 10, 2013 -> 12:40 PM) This reminds me a ton of the discussion about high/low ceiling pitchers. In 2005-2006, KW was drafting pitchers that were "low ceiling" guys, guys like Broadway, who had long college careers but didn't have the kind of stuff Chris Sale brings to the table. The idea was to get them up to the big leagues fairly quickly and possibly have them set up as trade bait. People got mad because the Sox were taking "baseball" guys rather than drafting guys with big time talent and trying to develop them. This strikes me as people being mad over precisely the reverse. Going after toolsy, high-risk, high-reward players is exactly what people spent years demanding the Sox do. They can develop pitchers, so they might as well go with toolsy guys there. They simply cannot develop hitters, so a football player who has missed significant developmental time and is already at least a little behind the 8 ball, is even further behind with a team that has had trouble getting anyone to look like a major leaguer at the plate in almost a decade. And it's not only hitting. Most White Sox prospects don't seem to know what they are doing when they do reach base, or what is going on when they are in the field. There are exceptions there, but hitting is almost without exception. 3 recent first round draft choices and out of the 3, only 1 hit .200. He hit .201 with no power. On the positive side, if MLB ever revisits and puts in a Designated Runner, the Sox should be set.

QUOTE (bbilek1 @ Sep 10, 2013 -> 12:35 PM) My birthday is March 31st and it has happened at least once. We played KC in the early 2000's in either '02 or '03. Otherwise, you're probably right. 2008 they opened in Cleveland on the last day of March.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 10, 2013 -> 09:41 AM) It's much less about KW trading prospects and much more about the organization refusing to spend competitively on acquiring amateur talent. It's probably also a failure in player development. I think there is a problem identifying guys who are going to hit. They have developed pitching just fine, but you would think if they had drafted guys who could or would hit, considering how they have pawned off prospects on other teams, at least a couple of them over the years would have some success. I understand they like the toolsy guys who they hope to develop, but almost all their top hitting prospects since Crede and Rowand and Jeremy Reed have been huge swing and miss ridiculously high strikeout rate guys who really don't offset that with a ton of homers and a good OBP. It's almost as if they draft the same player year after year and hope this time it will be different. I'd like to see them just one draft, concentrate on baseball players the first several rounds, not athletes. Being incredibly fast or strong does you no good if you can't hit the ball, or lay off pitches out of the strike zone, or can get a decent jump.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 9, 2013 -> 06:51 PM) You're right we don't have much, but that's unfortunately why a couple free agents isn't enough to make it happen. It's a rough situation, but spending money in free agency not only won't solve it, but it'll but the solution off even further. This is the product of selling out the system and drafting poorly for several years -- it works out fine as long as all of your acquisitions keep working out, but if a few of them bomb at the same time, you can't do anything until the money clears. This is why so many of us feel like high draft picks and prospects are important, because we don't want to see ourselves in this position again. We want Hahn to bite the bullet and do this right so that we an be back to expecting our team to be competitive years after year. This stuff won't help much next year, you're right, but a couple expensive old FAs won't help enough to get us a winner, so we have no choice but to bide our time. We're going to have to eat it for a little while, but if we stay the course, it won't have to be for long. If we get all rash and impatient, we're most likely going to be frustratingly in the middle for a long time. As much as I didn't admire KW, I think everyone needs to keep one thing straight. The farmhands for the most part he "sold off" weren't going to make the White Sox any better than they are. Gio is an exception, but other than that, he traded a bunch of garbage for mostly garbage, but I would say he came out ahead overall. There is no doubt the Sox haven't developed hitters worth a darn for an alarming length of time, but it's not like the guys he traded became stars. They couldn't hit for their new teams.

Unless he's due a significant pay bump, I see no reason not to bring Veal back. He could return to the 2012 version.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 9, 2013 -> 02:22 PM) You may be right when we look back at the draft, that the top picks didn't matter. But for now, I want them to have as much flexibility as possible. We don't know how the class will shake out, there may be a clear top two, or top four, or whatever. The higher our pick, though, the better our chances. That's all it is. Like a few have said before -- if Ws are coming because of legitimate improvements in our core players, then that's fine, that's great. But if it's bad process producing good results, it won't last, and we're just losing one potential advantage for the future, however small it is. When I watch though, I never actually end up hoping for futility. I don't think my head can do that. But when the game is over and we lost, I feel just fine about it. Kinda like Jerksticks is saying, I think. I probably would be upset in retrospect though if I saw someone do something stupid and it worked out. At the end of the day, I just want our hitters to have a clue. If they can't get it, I want to replace them as fast as possible. Man, I've been watching other teams lately because the Sox are so ugly, and I gotta say, it makes me so envious to see how good teams are playing. Hitters just hitting, Watching the Sox all season has made hitting seem like a futile effort, but it really isn't for most of the league. Blech. This is what I don't understand. If guys haven't clearly made themselves top 3 picks right now, why would next college or HS season be enough to say, yeah that guy is a future MLB star? It seems to be putting a heck of a lot of weight on 60 games, if that. To me it makes it more of a crapshoot. There will be at least 5 future stars in the 2014 draft. They might not all be first round picks, and as usual, even when chosing in the 20s, the Sox will have a shot at one of them at minimum. It comes down to your scouts. They screw up #3 picks pretty often.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Sep 9, 2013 -> 02:00 PM) Yeah, but on opening day they weren't meaningless. That's the distinction here. We hold out hope when there's hope to have, but when you're 25 games under 500 with like a month to go, the W column becomes meaningless. Even tomorrow I'm going to be holding out for hope on opening day, and probably well into June at the very very least. Hopiong for losses in September when you have the worst non-Astros record in the league is way different than what you're describing. Maybe not at the time they didn't seem meaningless, but as the season unfolded, they became meaningless. Isn't trying to see into the future what we all are trying to do? The standings now are meaningless, but playing well may not be meaningless. The Sox were awful in 2007. For quite a while they were in position to grab the #1 pick. They had a good September dropping them to 8th and they picked Beckham. I think there is only 1 player with a higher career WAR than Beckham picked before him and he wasn't picked top 3. And who knows what affect that September had on the next season when the Sox made the playoffs. Buster Posey was picked #5, by far the prize of that draft, and it wasn't signability. He signed for $50k more than Tim Beckham who was chosen #1. A couple of good hitters and this team is right back into it. Cleveland was horrid and added Swisher, Bourn, Reynolds. Reynolds is gone, Bourn hasn't hit much and Swisher's numbers haven't been what they normally are. If the Sox sign the correct guys, and a couple of their young bats take a step up, they should be OK next year. I just want them to play well. If they drop to 5th, a future All Star will be available.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Sep 9, 2013 -> 01:45 PM) You just still don't get it, and that amazes me. You're right. I don't get it. Never will. You want the White Sox to lose every game thinking it will definitely make them better in the long run. You still have yet to prove it. As far as I'm concerned, someone posting on a White Sox message board game thread cussing when the Sox take the lead is doing nothing more than trolling. BTW, it isn't as if the Sox will be picking 15th if they suddenly start winning now. I'm a bad fan. I want the Sox to play well, and win. If it costs them a spot or 2 in the draft, I really doubt it will be the difference between being horrible or great for the next 10 years.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Sep 9, 2013 -> 12:42 PM) You didn't see anyone rooting for White Sox losses after the first week of April, so why would you expect anyone to root for Bears losses after the first week in football? Your comment doesn't make any sense because the Bears are 1/16th through their season any anything can happen. The White Sox are 90% through their season any NOTHING can happen. These two teams are no where near in the same spot right now. Yeah, but if they lost on Opening Day and more often the first week, it would have helped their draft position correct? So those wins were just as meaningless and hurtful to draft position now. If you are going to cuss Gillaspie for going deep now, you should be upset Flowers hit a game winning homer on Opening Day. The Sox were 1-9 this roadtrip. It's just obnoxious to me people were upset they won a game. Not upset because 1 out of 10 was embarrassing, but because 1 out of 10 was too much. The Sox have 19 games left. They are probably going to win at least 8 or 9 of them.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 9, 2013 -> 12:13 PM) Yes. Don't you? I'm not for tanking in any sport. I just don't know why it is totally different whether the season just started or is almost over. If you aren't good enough, you aren't good enough. You still play to win or IMO it will come back to haunt you one way or another. How many teams have benefitted over the years from losing games basically on purpose? I also think if the Bears had lost yesterday, there wouldn't be a very optimistic outlook. I was at the game, and in the first half there was a lot of complaining coming from behind me in the stands.