Vance Law

QUOTE(BlackBetsy @ Oct 30, 2007 -> 03:09 PM) In any case, I think the Sox HAVE to go for some OBP in the offseason. I think the Sox have to go for some not everyone (besides Thome) hitting way below their career averages/their abilities. That alone brings OBP up significantly. They were 8th in MLB in 06.

QUOTE(santo=dorf @ Oct 30, 2007 -> 04:33 PM) I agree. If we're going to spend $13 million for a SS, why not Tejada? Furcal is the better defender. Is much faster/ steals bases. Would fill our hole at leadoff. Meanwhile, Tejada is not 2004 Tejada. His slugging has dropped in each of the last 4 years. Furcal put up better power numbers in 2006 than Tejada did in 2007.

QUOTE(rockren @ Oct 30, 2007 -> 06:26 AM) It's comments like these that make me hate KW. He's just too candid for his own good sometimes and ends up sounding like an ass-bag. I don't understand your reaction there at all. I don't find anything he said to be remotely overly candid. He's saying Rodriguez costs too much money. The only way to come up with that money would be to increase ticket prices very sharply.

First off, Uribe was 6th in walks, last year, not 5th. The orang-utan who wrote that article failed to include Iguchi who had 44 walks in only 90 games. Also Uribe was 2nd in plate appearances, not 3rd. QUOTE(CanOfCorn @ Oct 30, 2007 -> 04:19 PM) The fact that Dye only had 45 is very telling. One because he is a pretty free swinger and two because he didn't have a lot of protection. How many walks do you think Dye had in 2005? He didn't get up to 45. 45 walks is pretty much exactly typical for Dye. He didn't get a whole lot more last year when there was a reason to pitch around him because he was one of the top 5 hitters in the league. This year he hit .244 in the first half of the season. QUOTE(CanOfCorn @ Oct 30, 2007 -> 04:19 PM) I don't care if every player on the 40 man was called up for 100 abs, Uribe shouldn't be fifth on the team in walks. Yes he should. QUOTE(CanOfCorn @ Oct 30, 2007 -> 04:19 PM) It's not a slam on Uribe, we already know what we have in him, it's more telling of the rest of the team. No it isn't. Your bizarre claims don't make any sense. They make exactly the same amount of sense as this one: "Josh Fields should not have been on the team last year, because IN HIS ENTIRE CAREER he didn't have as many home runs as Jim Thome hit IN JUST 2006! And you guys call Fields a power hitter??!?!!?" Did you look at the numbers? Uribe didn't have the 6th highest walk rate on the team. He had the 6th highest number of total walks. He had the 12th highest walk rate among guys who got at least 100 at bats. Right about exactly where you'd expect to find him. Higher only than AJ among regulars, and Toby Hall, Pods, Cintron among others who got 100 at bats. The Sox, due to injuries, trades, and minor league call ups only had 5 players who had enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title. After those 5, both Iguchi and Fields had more walks than Uribe. The guy who saw the most playing time (outside of AJ) but who had LESS walks than Uribe was Owens. Owens-- 389 plate appearances. Uribe-- 563 plate appearances. Uribe had 7 more walks in those additional 174 plate appearances. So Uribe being 6th on the team in raw number of walks is not outrageous, or horrendous, or even surprising. It is exactly, precisely what one would expect.

There have been mentions of whether or not this deal means ARodrig is unlikely to go to the Tigres. While I certainly don't think Inge is in any way blocking him from being picked up, it would be an astronomical jump for their payroll, over what already seems to me a pretty significant increase. If these contract numbers are right (and correct me if I'm wrong), some Tigers' raises for 08 over 07: Mags $3 mil Shef $1 mil Pudge $2 mil Guillen $7 mil Bonderman $4 mil Inge $1.3 mil Renteria $6 mil (subtracted out Casey's 07 salary) ...all that and they haven't paid for Timo yet not sure what will happen with regard to potential free agents Ken Rogers $8mil and T. Jones $5 mil

I like Damon for us, though he's not worth $13 million.

QUOTE(fathom @ Oct 29, 2007 -> 07:33 PM) Very similar to their Sheffield trade last year. It is very similar to that trade. Big name vet. Taking on salary. I said at that time that I didn't think Sheff would actually improve their 07 offense much over 06 because he was basically taking the at bats away from Thames and Monroe. Thames/Monroe in 06 combined for an OPS of .822 Sheffield in 2007 .839

QUOTE(klaus kinski @ Oct 29, 2007 -> 07:27 PM) Point is-they gave up NOTHING to strengthen them significantly. WE will trade Garland an established starting pitcher, and get less. Thats the faith I have in Williams The Tigers did strengthen themselves significantly, if the 2008 season had already happened and it was called 2007. They essentially replaced Sean Casey with Renteria. They improve their defense at ss (though I'm not sure how much, don't know if Renteria is even better than average anymore). They lose Casey with a career .816 OPS in favor of Renteria with his career .756 OPS. Basically over the past 3 years, the difference between the two is Renteria's career year last year in the NL. His last time in the AL he sported an OPS+ of 89 and an OPS of .720. So they upped their payroll by $6 million for an upgrade at ss on defense (and a li'l speed on the basepaths, though not a basestealer anymore). The guy they got and the guy they drop both exist within each other's margins of reasonable potential outcomes with the bat for next year.

QUOTE(max power @ Oct 29, 2007 -> 01:14 PM) Its not unrealistic, I just wouldn't bet on it. Why? In your situation joe has an entire career to surpass what josh does in his (almost) 2nd year. That's a strange way of looking at it. Fields has consistently, throughout the minors, drawn walks at a higher rate than Crede has. Fields had more walks (35) in his 100 games in MLB last year, than Crede has put up in any of his seasons with the Sox (34 was his high in 144 games in 04). Fields drew a combined 74 walks between AAA and the Sox last season.

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Oct 29, 2007 -> 11:12 AM) As for the last part of the first post, options will be picked up/declined over the next 10 days so we will see a little action, aside from that though I wouldn't expect KW to do anything substantial until at least Thanksgiving. This will be interesting to see what happens with Uribe. As it's been discussed in tons of threads. There are no clear cut FA options at short. There are various hopeful trade ideas that people have brought up, which probably mean dealing Garland. There's really no easy answer and the decision needs to be made within a week and a half. Is Furcal + one of our AAA starters better than Garland + Uribe? Decline the Uribe option in order to hopefully sign him for a million or 2 cheaper (which could not be done for a period of several months per the rules I think)? AlRodr?

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Oct 29, 2007 -> 12:40 AM) Arods VORP 96.6 Lowell 46.5 Santana 57.7 = 104.7 So Arod by himself is almost just as much as Lowell and Santana according to Vorp. Arod plays in a park that doesnt favor the right handed hitter. Imagine if he was here, in the bandbox in the summer when a fart gets the ball out. My guess is those are only 2007 numbers, right? 2006 would tell a different story. Are wins and losses used at all to calculate VORP for pitchers? Cause if so, Santana gets screwed pretty bad by his team.

QUOTE(Steve9347 @ Oct 29, 2007 -> 09:45 AM) Can't say I didn't think the same thing. The reality settled in, I thought about how God awful this team was this year, and I realized we'll be lucky to be .500, let alone win the World Series. SO for this to play out, we need to either move to the NL Central or the AL Central needs to get really weak really quickly. Who knows what will happen, but Cleveland had a horrendous bullpen and a lot of bad luck and only won 77 games in 2006. Then won the division this year. We had a terrible bullpen, bad hitting, and a perfect storm of bad luck this year.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Oct 29, 2007 -> 12:01 AM) How much are Johan and Mike Lowell going to get paid. I want to see how this math will work out . I think that Johan and Lowell will make more as a group than Arod and the 10 million dollar pitcher. Just my thought. Johan $25 - $30 million Lowell $12ish million. Maybe it goes a little over $40.

He reverse-Jordans and plays for the Bulls next year.

Who would you rather have for your $40 million if you are the Yanks (or any other team)? Johan and Mike Lowell or Rodriguez and xyz pitcher who costs $10 million

Also, I find Boras' timing of the announcement, unbelievably ridiculous and Boraslike.

The possibility of Rodri would definitely be exciting. Especially if he could play a few years at short, then move back to 3rd as he ages, then 1st base, then DH. I think it would honestly take a real serious injury for him not to be useful at least as a DH even 10 years from now. However, if it takes trading veterans like Konerko, etc. to afford it, I can't realistically see him wanting to come over and play with several of Owens, Sweeney, Richar, Fields, Danks, Floyd etc all on the same team.

Spaceman

QUOTE(BearSox @ Oct 28, 2007 -> 03:29 PM) Oh puh-lease... He isn't a special defender. A special defender means he's the best defender to ever play the position in several years and is without the question the best at his position now. He is neither of those. He is a good, well above average, gold glove caliber defender, but he ain't special. And his bat is FAR from above average. Hell, I probably wouldn't even call his bat average. He has had one career year with the bat, and nothing has shown me to believe that that year was anything other then a career year. This is a goofy post, BearSox. You are going to argue what the universal definition of "special" is with regard to baseball players' defense, as determined by you? Going so far as to launch a "puh-lease"? Pretty wuss. If you bizarrely have a hard time handing out the adjective "special", fine. I could just as easily, and for no sensible reason, pick an argument with your "gold glove caliber", as the Gold Glove often is awarded to not-even-good defenders, and therefore does not necessarily carry a connotation of quality. But that would be pointless. We agree that Crede is one of the top few defensive 3rd basemen. As far as offensively, that's your guesstimate against mine. For the second half of 2005, the '05 playoffs, and 2006 Crede was above average with the bat. FAR from not above average! You could look at his career numbers and say that they are average or slightly below. Or alternately you could note that the overwhelming majority of players (see for example most of baseball players ever) are not so good when they first come into the league, and then get better. You could note that this was the case for Crede for the most recent year and a half stretch when he was healthy. You have your guesstimate about his future, and I have mine.

QUOTE(BearSox @ Oct 27, 2007 -> 11:51 PM) gosh, Crede is so freaking overrated by Sox fans. I mean hes a good player and all when and IF he is healthy, but he ain't anything special. On defense, he is special, saving the Sox a lot of runs over the course of the year. With the bat, he's above average. Those 2 things together make for quite a good valuable player.....when he's healthy.

QUOTE(elrockinMT @ Oct 27, 2007 -> 12:48 PM) Sign Joe before the season starts. Fields is not the 3B person we need to make a run at a championship. It is Joe Crede. Josh needs grooming out there in LF. He can play an occassional game at 3B along with Ozuna though. One question I have though - does anyone think Fieds could make the transformation at 2B or SS? Did he ever play there? Fields at 2B or SS is not even close to possible. On a team with an already high payroll, they need to find value anywhere they can. Fields is one of the (or the) only youngster we have with a productive MLB ready bat, and with a league minimum salary. He's already close to, at, or better than Crede offensively. Obviously he's worse defensively, though certainly with potential to improve. Crede starts '08 at 3rd. What happens to him depends on whether or not the Sox are in contention. Trade him at the deadline if we're out of it. Keep him and take the picks if we've got a shot. If he plays well and we can sign him to a hometown discount, great, but I highly doubt that.

QUOTE(Chisoxfn @ Oct 27, 2007 -> 03:37 PM) Still, if they could get him to agree to a 3 yr deal at like 6 mill a year I'd do it. Boras laughs at your $6 million.

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Oct 25, 2007 -> 03:41 PM) In no particular order, I'll take Albert Pujols Alex Rodriguez Miguel Cabrera Curtis Granderson Vlad Guerrero Joe Mauer Victor Martinez Mark Teixeira Hanley Ramirez Prince Fielder Chase Utley Ryan Howard David Wright Grady Sizemore Matt Holliday over Carl Crawford without even the thought of a second thought. Carl Crawford is not an impact player, and he is not a guy you build a team around. He steals a lot of bases, hits about .310, and doesn't put up much power. Top 10 leadoff hitter, possible top 50 hitter in the game. And plays left gd field.

It never would have gotten to extra innings if the Astros weren't given that fake home run that hit on the in-play side of the yellow line. But I'm glad that happened for the Blum highlight.

QUOTE(Jenks Heat @ Oct 25, 2007 -> 12:37 PM) Doesn't LaRussa have a Harvard law degree? Florida State, apparently, so same thing.