marsh

it's too bad that he's mucking up his argument with personal jabs because it is a very good argument. i think the crux of his argument is that you shouldn't base a pitcher's worth on his win total because it is heavily based on run support and luck. i think that your statement quoted above is one that we all agree on. his loaiza comment about wins was that he was using your own argument against you. you said that loaiza had a bad second half, but his half splits on wins would suggest he had a better second half. i think if you take into account that colon pitched for the indians with an explosive offense, and that ponson, i believe, has been with baltimore during some very lean years, i think that ponson at 7 mil is a better value than colon at 12 mil. although having both would be nice. we should be able to make our arguments without the personal jabs though. it makes it alot easier to see the other person's side, and even (god forbid) admit your wrong, if it is presented without the insults. edit: sorry about the horrible formatting, i don't know how that happened.

i remember not too long ago that the newly resigned/fired jerry krause said that the chances of the bulls signing scottie pippen were "slim and none, and slim just left the building". so i can still hope.

honestly, i'd be a little disapointed myself. ozzie's ties to the organization and his attitude make him my choice. not a knock on cito, i think he would be a fine manager, but my sox blinders hope for ozzie.

i guess that his age can be both a con and an asset then. another pro might be that he is a very exciting player and may increase attendance. should that be in green?

i thought since his name has come up as possible trade bait, it would be fun to do a pro/con list on him and get some other opinions. Pro's base stealing speed (obviously) power at a usual non-power position, 2b, CF? cheap salary, i believe '04 would be his third year age, still very young, unlimited upside? post-season experience Con's no plate discipline (shown to whole world in playoffs) questionable defense i thought that i would be able to come up with more con's but for some reason this is all i can think of right now. what do you guys think?

i hear ya, i used to be a pretty big blackhawks fan. around the days of roenick, belfour, chelios, and goulet. then slowly i just stopped watching when they decided to field a minor league hockey team. i could probably name three blackhawk players right now and that is probably three more than most chicagoans. if i see a blackhawks game when flipping channels i usually watch for a couple minutes but that's about all.

tony, we are on to something now. the sox are not New York or Boston or LA. This is Chicago. now tell me what is wrong with this picture? i think that we (the fans) have been beaten over the head by MLB (in general) and the white sox (specifically) that they "can't afford it" and "can't spend a dollar when you only have fifty cents", which in my opinion is baloney, that we start to believe it. what if i asked you or any sox fan how would you like to have alex rodriguez at short for the sox next year? the answer would probably range from, the sox would never take on that big a contract, or we couldn't afford any other players with him on the team. that would be my reaction. i think that we confuse two numbers. the amount the sox are willing to pay, and the amount the sox can afford to pay. in my opinion the sox management if they wanted to could have a 100 million plus payroll. i think that they have the means or could find the way to come up with the money without much effort. but they choose to go the financially sound or cheap way (whatever way you want to look at it.) there is a reason that we only make the playoffs about once every ten years, and the reason is is because it takes an enormous amount of luck to be successful in the sox system. we rely on our scouting, drafting, plug ins, and the occasional big ticket item, and there is absolutely no margin for error. the years we made the playoffs everything seemed to go our way. no major injuries, guys having career years. we won't cover our mistakes by throwing money at it. now i think it's most important to spend money wisely and not just throw 100+million at the wall and hope something sticks, but the sox, iIF THEY WANTED could do any of the following. trade for a-rod. if we took on his contract the rangers would require probably a couple of prospects, hell they might even take pk off our hands for relieving them of the enormous burden of a-rod's contract. sign bartolo sign vlad the possibilities are endless. i doubt this management would ever do these things but i believe that if they wanted to they could. the financial constraints are self imposed, and i'm sure that bud selig appreciates us not being another NY. but i may be wrong about it all.

i agree with that and i think 99% of sox fans would support any move made that would better the team. i can't really see a sox fan saying "don't trade maggs, i don't care if they give us josh beckett, miguel cabrera and throw in brad penney" i just think we all have different opinions on what would actually make the team better. which is why this message board can be very fun and entertaining

i think it would be wrong for the sox to ask magglio to re-structure his contract. look at the numbers he put up in '99 and '00 when he made less than a million for those two years combined. when the sox gave him this current contract i would guess their thinking involved rewarding him for those years where he made jack in addition to what they viewed his future performance would be. well he kept up his part of the deal with his numbers in my opinion and to turn around and ask him to re-negotiate for less money, i think would be insulting. if the situation were reversed and he was asking for more money because the market had spiraled upward how do you think fans and management would react? my guess would be they would tell him to honor the contract he signed. an example would be scottie pippen.

ok, i was going to just add this to beastly's post, but i think i'll start a new topic because, well, i don't start many new topics so i thought what the hey. let's take a look at magg's production and salary history. '97, rookie year, 21 games, salary $150k Age 23 Runs 12 HR's 4 RBI's 11 AVG. .319 OBP .338 OPS .918 '98 1st full year, 145 games, salary $175k, age 24 R 70 HR14 RBI 65 AVG .282 OBP .326 OPS .741 '99 2nd full year, 157 games, salary $305k, age 25 R 100 HR30 RBI 117 AVG .301 OBP .349 OPS .859 13SB's '00 3rd full year, 153 games, salary $425k, age 26 R 102 HR32 RBI 126 AVG .315 OBP .371 OPS .917 18SB's '01 4th full year, 160 games, salary $3.75 mil, age 27 R 97 HR31 RBI 113 AVG .305 OBP .382 OPS .915 25SB's '02 5th full year, 153 games, salary $6.5 mil, age 28 R116 HR38 RBI 135 AVG .320 OBP .381 OPS .978 '03 6th full year, 160 games, salary $9 mil, age 29 R95 HR29 RBI 99 AVG .317 OBP .380 OPS .926 career averages AVG .307 OBP .365 SLG .527 OPS .892 career totals R 592 HR178 RBI 666 salary total $20.3 million dollars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! basically the white sox have a huge bargain in magglio ordonez thus far in his major league career. his production has far exceeded what his salary would have been on the open market. fortunatly for the sox you basically own a player for the first six years i believe, and really do not have to begin to pay relative market value until you reach arbitration. anyway the point is the the sox organization has gotten a hell of a lot of production for the money spent. and that may even be an understatement. magglio will enter the '04 season at the age of 30. it seems that most major leaguer's have thier prime years between the ages of 27-33. plus with the conditioning players go through they seem to be able to sustain thier perfomance even longer now. point is it is highly possible that we are just hitting the tip of the iceberg with maggs and at worst he should at least put up the number's he's averaged for the last three years, which are damn good. people are saying things like maggs isn't worth $14 mil and we can spend that on two or three good players yada yada yada. but when maggs signed this contract i don't remember anyone saying that we overpaid, if anything we were getting a bargain while guys like a-rod, jeter, manny and others were getting much larger contracts for mucho bucks and years. the fact is that the last two years the the market for free agents has been mostly garbage and now we say that maggs is not worth 14 mil. two years from now that could all change again and 14 mil could be a bargain, nobody knows. the whole point is here we have a player who has been with the sox his whole career, a fan favorite, and a good guy from all i've read and heard. a player who thus far in his career for this organization has produced far and away more than what he has made in salary, and now because next year he makes $14 million we should trade him. not only do i feel maggs deserves the $14 million he will make next year, but the sox should try very hard to lock him up to another three to four year deal from between $40 mil and $55mil. maggs is the kind of guy you try to acquire, not trade away because the short term market for players is low right now. i think this offseason is huge for the sox. picking a manager (ozzie i would like, but that's another thread) FA signings/trades can determine what this team is going to do the next few years. so if anyone is still reading this long post (sorry) Go Sox!

meh, i'd rather have derek lee than castillo.

thanks. now let's get some runs.

i'm gonna go ahead and do a little second guessing here and say that manuel should have had robbie pinch hit before dauber. with robbie up there with one out the sox have the option of a suicide squeeze. he could always use dauber after pinching for olivo. right idea wrong sequence.

i'm sure he will improve with experience. maybe brown can the guy that can step up and intimidate some WR's. he seems to prefer the interception to the big hit, not that there's anything wrong with that, especially when he returns them for td's. i'm not a big follower of the college game. who is supposed to go first next year? i think i remember hearing the name roy williams and that he's a cornerback. too bad for us bear fans but i think we will have a shot at that number one pick.

thank you capn obvious.

yeah, you are probably right, he would have to work to get to a safety type body from a linebacker body. i thought that urlacher played safety in college though, so he has experience there. plus was ronnie lott anything special at one on one coverage?

but could he be better? i know a lot of people just absolutely love him, and i think he is a great player. but could he help the defense more as a safety? it seems to me that the one criticism people have with him is that he can't shed blocks. he can use his speed to beat the block, or his agility to go around the block, but once a guy is on him he is pretty much out of the play. urlacher could be as good or better than guys like ronnie lott and john lynch. put him at strong safety with mike brown at free safety and they would have an increased presence in the passing game while still being close enough to the line when necessary to make plays on the running back. i would love to see him making huge hits on recievers coming over the middle. right now recievers are catching balls behind him at the linebacker position. also at strong safety he would have the benefit of both the d line and linebackers in front of him to take the blocks. i can just see brian flying in and making big plays, dodging around other guys tangled up. he would also be able to make stronger hits than he is able to now. he would have better angles on outside running plays, not to mention the hits he would be able to put on recievers. i think he would probably have to slim down just a bit to pick up a little speed since he'd be more responsible for the passing game, but he already is really fast. i thought about this alot and would really like to see it happen. burn away!

looks like he threw 123 pitches getting the CG. that's not horrible for a CG, but it's not something you want to see outing after outing from a starter.

Hawk said that the Sox MVP this year was................ Kenny Williams, hands down, no doubt about it. discuss.

i thought that claussen was the yankee's top pitching prospect. and isn't he also lefthanded? wouldn't that be the equivalent of us trading cotts or honel for boone? if that's the case i thought the consensus here was that cotts or honel would be too much to give up for boone. plus the yankees throwing in over 3mil. is this really such a bad deal for the reds? as for the suppan trade, i thought that freddy sanchez was a top ss prospect. i think i remember some posters here saying we should try and get this guy for our shortstop of the future. would you be happy with the sox giving up jeremy reed or borchard for suppan for a couple months? i guess i just don't understand why some are saying that the reds and pirates are getting taken. it seems to me that the yankees and bosox paid a pretty hefty price.

i just read somewhere that marte has seven blown saves. tied for most in the AL. i was amazed by that. marte has been throwing darts lately. almost untouchable.

i think a lot of people are becoming dissatisfied with sportcenter/bball2nite and espn in general. it would be nice to see a new sports station pop up and try to challenge espn. kinda like a back to basics sports channel. espn news channel is really good though. as bad as espn is becoming foxsports is just off the charts horrible. what the hell is with calling the post game show the "Sox Post". it just sounds weird and bad.

looks like mcgriff has a torn groin according to yahoo. will they overpay for konerko now? who would we get in return/ starting pitching / relief. who could we get for a lee, konerko combo? maybe o. perez, mota, and maybe dave roberts to play center and lead off? move everett to left then? possible lineup 1.roberts cf 2.alomar 2b 3.thomas 1b 4.maggs rf 5.everett lf 6.valentin ss 7.daubach dh 8.crede 3b 9.olivo/sandy

cool, i look forward to discussing it more. i think you will enjoy the book. i'm a little more than halfway through it now. whatever the A's are trying to do, the results are certainly there. you make a good point about player projections/watching a guy play and a team of role players not being able to win, but it seems that is what the A's are attempting to do. look forward to your review.

rex, i thought it did a good job in the first few chapters of establishing the origins of, i guess you could call it "sabermetrics". it doesn't really say they (the A's or billy beane)invented the system but were really the first team to really utilize it. have you read it? i do think that they over-emphasize some things but reading it really makes me wonder on whether or not they want to resign tajada or to a lesser extent chavez because of thier lack of plate discipline/#of pitches they see per at bat.