Dick Allen

QUOTE (JohnCangelosi @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 09:12 PM) Podsednik denied a report that he and agent Ryan Gleichowski had turned off the White Sox by pushing for a two-year contract. "There was no demand on a two-year deal. Our phone lines were open and ready to communicate for anything. I don't know who started that," he said. "I was open to working on a one-year deal as much as a two-year from the very beginning." Full article here: http://chicago.whitesox.mlb.com/news/artic...sp&c_id=mlb Does anyone else find this interesting? I think most people would have been MORE than happy to signing Scotty Pods to the contract that KC signed him to before of course picking up Juan Pierre. I am thinking now the talk of Pods and his agent demanding a multi-year deal was nonsense and in fact it was a smoke screen the White Sox put out there because they wanted Juan Pierre to begin with. It would make sense as well that perhaps KW had some type of understanding they would get JP in the offseason from LA as a payback for the gratuitous Thome trade and never had any real intentions of resigning Pods, but just gave that impression that they were considering the option since he tends to be a fan favorite. On the other side, Pods may have over estimated the demand for his services in November and simply lowered them considerably once he realized ST is coming in less than 8 weeks and it was time to get a job. Thoughts? The White Sox really didn't want Pods back even at the price he signed for. Fan favorite means squat. He wasn't a fan favorite in 2006 and 2007, and I don't think that would have anything to do with it anyway. As Bobby Knight once said, if you start listening to the fans, you will wind up sitting with them. The Sox probably would have brought him back if he signed something like Andruw Jones, but even $1.75 million is kind of high considering his track record.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 08:21 PM) The White Sox think paying Juan Pierre 2/$8 is a good idea. You're saying it's not a reasonable argument to say Scott could have gotten somewhere close to that? Yes. The White Sox don't want to pay Pods in 2010 for what he did in 2009. Pierre is a much better bet to play at a higher level in 2010, although I think they overpaid for Pierre. And if it was reasonable then he and his agent are dumb if they played it out and signed what he eventually signed.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 08:06 PM) Probably because this was the best offer he's gotten recently, and if the Royals signed someone else he'd lose money. The fact is everyone has a limit. To say Pods wouldn't have been available at the price he signed for if there were 2 teams involved, probably is correct. To say his price could easily have gone up to $8 million, most likely is wrong. That said, I shed no tears Pods is no longer a White Sox and actually am happy he will be patrolling CF for another Central Division foe. We aren't talking about a big time player here. Pods had zero suitors last year. He had to call to get a minor league job. To his credit he made the most of it, and I don't blame him for trying to get a boatload of money. The worst thing that can happen is the team could say no, which apparently they all did.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 07:50 PM) Right, discipline, the strongest trait of the average American... How do you know the White Sox weren't prepared to give him $8 million? How do you have any clue what they were or were not willing to give him? How do you have any clue they would have gotten into a bidding war? They moved on. They didn't want him at a fraction of $8 million. If they were willing to give Pods $8 million, they would have given him $8 million. His agent isn't stupid enough to believe he would have done better than that. And if that's what Pods insisted on playing for why did he sign the contract he signed? Its not like the season starts tomorrow.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 07:39 PM) How do you have any clue what people have actually budgeted for when they go to auctions, Dick? I know several people who go to auctions regularly for all sorts of things. Some of them have lots of money. Each of them has a price where they drop out, unless what ever is being auctioned has some other value to them. Its called discipline. If the White Sox weren't prepared to give Pods $8 million a month or so ago, what makes you think they would give him $8 million just because the KC Royals really wanted him? Why would the Royals go to that figure just because the White Sox wanted him back? This isn't a highly valued player, and there are more than a couple of reports that basically said Pods wouldn't be back unless he played for close to the minimum.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 07:33 PM) One thing we have learned is not to wait around for a lead off hitter. That spot in the order has killed us too many times. Johnny Damon is still available. I can dream. Gammons said his price may drop to one year for $6-7 million. KW has to hop on that.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 07:25 PM) I'll admit, you are a very intelligent poster, but when it comes to baseball, you just don't know all that much. This thing could have gone to 2/$8 in a heartbeat just by having another bidder involved. Have you never seen a negotiation? An auction? All it takes is two bidders to drive the price exponentially higher than had there been just one. I've been to auctions. People usually don't bid more than what they budgeted especially if what they are bidding for isn't something all that valuable. I don't think Pods is a must-have type of guy or else someone would have paid him more money.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 07:18 PM) Exactly. How long exactly is Kenny supposed to wait around while Pods price is insane? Heck part of the reason his price got so cheap is because the White Sox getting Pierre eliminated a place where he could go. Same with the Cubs and Byrd. There are still some guys out there. I'm sure Pierre still would have been available. We really don't know if his price was ridiculous or not. I would assume most after the season ended would think he'd be able to get more than he wound up getting. BTW, I don't care that the Sox didn't sign Pods with the intention of playing him every day. Probably around May or June, I'm sure no one will be clamouring for Pods.

QUOTE (Princess Dye @ Jan 8, 2010 -> 07:16 PM) I'm not one to be preset to be negative about our moves. But there's a lot to the sentiment that we couldve just brought back Pods and bid for Matsui. Then, instead of Putz, you couldve hoped for a good year from Peña. There's an argument there. Because it leaves a nice bit of cash open for next offseason when the pool of FAs mightve been better. Of course remains to be seen how cheap Thome/Blaylock/Branyan will be. The White Sox don't sign the top FAs. If there is a bidding war they will drop out. That's the way they work. Since the Peavy move, you could just about question just about every trade or signing they made and have a decent argument either way.

I think Pods wanted a ton of money initially and good for him. No one was going to give it to him. There were reports that the White Sox "interest" in Pods was all PR. They may have offered him a contract, but there's no guarantee it was any higher than what he eventually signed for. They probably would have taken him back with a low guarantee less than $1 million. We can compare 2009 numbers, but if that's all that matters, there's really no sense ever playing the games. There's very little chance Pods can duplicate those or he would have received a higher payday. Pierre has a much better shot IMO and in the White Sox opinion of being the better of the two in 2010. The argument can be made would the White Sox be better off paying Pods what KC is paying him and bringing in someone else or just paying Pierre his money. At least if the Sox made a bad decision, they weren't the biggest idiots in the deal. The Dodgers are paying Pierre more to play for the White Sox than JR is.

The Brewers, but if they played in the WS, I would pull for the AL team.

Pods received only slightly more guaranteed than Omar Vizquel. If the Sox offered him a one year deal , it must have been something similar to what they gave Jones.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Jan 7, 2010 -> 11:03 PM) Loading a gun and aiming it doesn't seem so bad. Bringing empty ones on the other hand, evil! (FYI, I think both should be suspended, but Crittenton far more so) I don't know why Crittenton has received a pass so far, but if the incident happened like reported, he'll probably never play in the NBA again. There are reports that the earlier description isn't really what happened, in fact, I read where the gun Crittenton pointed at Arenas was one of Arenas' spares.

QUOTE (nitetrain8601 @ Jan 7, 2010 -> 05:14 PM) I agree. Bringing guns in the first place was dumb, but not really all that bad. And the picture, I don't get what's so bad about that in the huddle in pregame warmups. The way he deals with things is by joking around. He always has. With that said, this has been a sucky year for him. First his fiance/wife is cheating on him with Shaq, and now this. Yeah, but taking away his whole paycheck isn't. It says in there, the fine cannot exceed $150,000.00 Bringing guns to work not even including not having the proper paperwork to be handling the guns and pointing it at a co-worker or threatening a co-worker with said gun would get 99.99 % of us fired. David Stern warned NBA players about guns on NBA "property". Arenas is an idiot, and even if he was trying to make a little joke about the situation, it wasn't the time or the place. I think there's a pretty good chance he winds up doing time.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jan 7, 2010 -> 05:09 PM) Problem is that it is funded by the park district, which would never front the money for field turf. The PD spent $500k resodding the field this year, although I think the first re-sod was on U2. So they spend at least $250k resodding each year and many years double that, plus maintenance. Field Turf would pay for itself pretty quickly. Iowa installed Field Turf this past spring. It cost $2 million. A lot of that cost was a new drainage system. I don't know what Soldier Field would require, but maintenance alone, not including the re-sodding is probably six figures annually.

QUOTE (southsideirish71 @ Jan 7, 2010 -> 01:26 AM) With either Bates or Martz, this offense will got on attack. The next step is to get that green painted mudd replaced with Field Turf. Field Turf is an important step in the offseason. Having a speed attack type offense when your receivers are going to fall down, slip due to green painted mudd or planting sod in December is not going to work. I'm not sold on Bates. He's been an OC for one year and that was a USC team with 9 returning starters. According to most, the offense underachieved. Just because Cutler's buddy shouldn't be a reason to give him this huge responsibility.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Jan 6, 2010 -> 08:38 PM) Brian Zoubek is the worst college basketball player of all time. You obviously haven't had the opportunity to see about 90% of the Iowa Hawkeyes roster play basketball.

I'm pretty sure Konerko is Polish.

Big Ten finally is legit during the Bowl season.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jan 5, 2010 -> 10:41 PM) Yes, but they were playing awful football when he was throwing all those interceptions. The game against Indiana, for example. That's just how they play. It isn't pretty. Everyone says they suck, and when the game is over, they win.

I don't know how much Fox paid for the BCS games, but how in the hell do you have Dick f***ing Stockton calling one of these games? For the love of God, he shouldn't be doing anything more than the Humanitarian Bowl.

"No question, we developed some young players,'' Turner said. "We had three new offensive linemen, two of which had really never played before. We had Chris (Williams) playing on the right side, a position he hadn't played, and we had three receivers that had never played before with a new quarterback. "You look at where we were at the start and then at the end, they're different players. You don't just bring in a quarterback with that many new players and click right away. It takes time, sometimes years. There's no question, it's going to take off." Can't say that he doesn't make a few good points.

Randy Johnson almost became a White Sox shortly before he really started dominating. In fact, the trade was so close to happening, they had his jersey made and hanging in a clubhouse stall. Whoever the Seattle GM was at the time must have changed his mind at the last second. The Sox may have dominated the 90's.

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Jan 5, 2010 -> 01:30 PM) Not sure why people think Iowa's offense will be all too dynamic. They are healthier than they have been all year. I don't know about dynamic, but they should be able to score some points.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jan 4, 2010 -> 08:58 PM) Yeah that is such a lazy ass argument, you see pics of him from college when he played FOOTBALL and you could see he was still a behemoth. Then he got old, and got fat like all old guys do. He got real big about 1993/1994. I remember him on Letterman saying he weighed 285. I guess he has a couple of sister who check in over 3 bills.