JUGGERNAUT

DYK cub fan that Houston in the last 3 weeks is the worst scoring team in the NL? Is it just possible that you're sweep had more to do with how bad they played than anything else? Let's see where you are after the rest of the Jun games.

Still stinging from what the Marlin did to you last year I see .. .old wounds never heal I guess. The 2nd place White Sox lost 2/3 to the 1st place Marlins. The 3rd place Cubs swept the 5th place Astros. And you're winning the World Series because?

http://www.soxtalk.com/index.php?showtopic=20657&st=15 Debt to Maggs would be liquid.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/sa...alary-chart.htm Here's the details. Thome's at the bottom with 70 mil remaining. CWS: hooked for 34 mil. Excellent given it's a below-avg rev team. That supports the theory they can afford Maggs at 70/5. But with insurance being harder to find & Maggs going on the DL I would imagine JR is a bit spooked. Whether Maggs is worth that much of the SOX payroll is debatable but one thing is for certain: other teams seem to feel he is. With that being said even at 70/5 & assuming that only 3 yrs can be insured at 70% of the value realistically Maggs is what I would call liquid debt. If Kenny was to sign him to 70/5 right now w/out a no-trade clause barring injury he would have no problem trading him. If you combine his trade value with his performance 70/5 should not be cost-prohibitive. For example: suppose the SOX for economic reasons are forced to trade him to the NYY. The SOX could probably get Godzilla + prospect for Maggs straight up. Assuming of course Maggs has a typical year in 2004. The net effect of that deal is both younger talent & a savings of nearly 7 mil a year. Now I'm not advocating this be done but it's an example of how liquid Maggs debt would be.

The problem for NY is that they don't have enough cheap young players to do trades themselves. That's why they might bring the SOX in to thwart BOS. This is a very interesting article for those who think the market is turning up for FA's. http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/sa...contracts_x.htm NYY : payroll approaching $200 mil, on the hook for 567 mil from 05-10. Three times higher than any other team. PHI: hooked for $181 mil. 2001: MLB hooked for 3.7 over 10 yrs to 272 players. 2004: MLB hooked for 2.8 over 6 yrs to about 1/2 as many players. Insurance: Many times players can't complete terms. Many have dropped out. The few that remain will insure no more than 3 yrs & 70% of the value. OAK: 66 mil/6 Eric Chavez MTL: hooked for 308K ARI: hooked for 31 mil thru 2006, plus deferred comp. The issue of course is that fewer players are getting a much bigger pc of the pie & that increases the risk of the overall debt. The Yankees help circulate & pay down that debt with their spend & purge tactics but it's still an ever-increasing problem.

IF I had to guess this is a rumor that was started out of Redsox Nation after Johnson's last quote. He has a no-trade clause so he could have ended it there but his response of uncertainty seemed to open the door for the potential of a trade. I don't think that would be to either Bos or NY but rather a team in CA or TX. Randy is not going to want to be that far from home. It's a big door for CA with ANA, SD, SF, & LA all in it. You'd have to include TX & HOU as well. But I don't see him going beyond that. If he's really open to a trade wouldn't SD be the likely spot?

I don't believe any one at the Fed level is going to change this. It must come from the states themselves. I was intrigued by Kerry initially because he began to talk about it. But when he unveiled his plan it was pretty much the same speak as Bush. Both are grossly in favor of the global economy as it's moving today. If you are wishy-washy between the two then you might consider Bush on this basis. Since his time as gov of Texas & during both his campaign & term in office he has always been a strong believer in extending NAFTA to the entire western hemisphere. That's not just lip service either because he's in favor of regulation & laws that will shift capital from overseas to central & south America. Why does that make a difference? Because democracy is still alive in south America. You can't have human rights initiatives without it. If you had to guess which region would be more likely to raise it's own wage growth & build it's economy it would be the CA & SA. When you consider the Hispanic links to Bush's family it only strengthens that bond. Jebs desire to grant amnesty to illegals who have been living in Florida for years is not that bizarre really. It's basically a statement that it's cost-prohibitive & politically incorrect in the state of FL to deal a heavy hand to the problem. So if they are going to be here anyways it's best to tax them like everyone else. I don't really know Kerry's views on the issue but I know that I've tried to follow his campaign enough to where if it was a central focus topic I would have heard something.

Read the WSJ on the subject. The wages for the persons supervising the plants have dropped considerably. They are coming back to America because it makes cost & profit sense to build plants that are predominantly automated over here. Any new plant is going to take on at least twice the work force needed to run it because of the need for quality assurance in the plant. But once that process is in place & the plant is running at optimal efficiency you will see the work force cut in half. These are temp jobs in a 3-5 yr cycle at best. Without a real policy in place to deal with the drastic difference in the cost of labor & supplies in the US vs China, & other low wage regions there will be no boom coming soon. Inflation related to energy prices & an ever-increasing highly skilled & highly educated work force outside of the US is going to dampen any gains. Capital costs more in the US than these low wage regions because taxes & laws keep them artificially high. Meaning they don't allow true market forcces to dictate what the market is willing to pay. You can't have it both ways. You can't artificially hold things constant in your own country & then open the doors to a global economy that has proven time & again that human rights & American values don't have a place in the movement of capital around the world. Need I remind you of Gap & Nike?

Any one interested in Kotsay? http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctime.../8953861.htm?1c Beltran is in the final season of a contract that will pay him $9 million this season. Thus, he's still owed about $4.5 million for the remainder of the season. To squeeze Beltran into the payroll without a bump to the payroll, the A's likely would have to dump salary. Center fielder Mark Kotsay would seem be the most logical choice there, considering he's scheduled to make $6.5 million annually through 2006. But a high-ranking club official said the A's aren't necessarily convinced Beltran would have more of an impact than Kotsay, who has raised his average to .297 by hitting .432 over his past 19 games. Hudson says the A's need bullpen help. Other than Bos & NY who doesn't?

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/sports/8951653.htm?1c They also received an undisclosed amount of money to offset the approximately $3.7 million owed Koch this season. The Marlins also received what Beinfest termed ''a significant amount of cash.'' Williams said the White Sox would pick up ''more than half'' -- from $2 million to $2.5 million -- of Koch's salary. It looks like Kenny shaved 1.5 mil .. still pretty good in my book

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/sfl-mar...ports-headlines Koch is owed about $3.9 million of his 2004 salary, with the White Sox agreeing to pay more than half of that figure, according to Chicago GM Ken Williams. To get Koch, 29, the Marlins had to give up their 17th-best prospect, according to Baseball America. Valdez, SS was hitting .319 with 19 stolen bases at Albuquerque. Carl Pavano has positioned himself to parlay his 2004 success into a huge payday. The owner of the National League's eighth-lowest ERA (2.81) after Wednesday's shutout, Pavano is eligible for free agency this offseason. Ok so maybe it's not enough to pursue Beltran, but then again ... http://www.nypost.com/sports/yankees/17501.htm Since the Royals like Boston minor-league hurlers Juan Perez and Abe Alvarez and major-league infielder Kevin Youkilis, the Red Sox are considered among the favorites to land Beltran when the Royals decide to move the center fielder, who will become a free agent following the season. That's why, despite a crying need for a starting pitcher, the Yankees keep in touch with Kansas City GM Allard Baird, who wants Trenton (Double-A) catcher Dioner Navarro included in any deal with the Yanks. Baird dispatched scout Pat Jones to New Britain to watch Navarro and infielder Robinson Cano, who was recently shifted from second to third. Hurting the Yankees in the Beltran and Freddy Garcia chases is they don't have a highly thought of pitching prospect the Royals and Mariners want. Brad Halsey, 23, could be that arm if he pitches well tomorrow against the Dodgers in his major-league debut. Deja Vu? .. Do the CWS become part of the action in NY's effort to keep a big name player from being a RedSox?

What an eye-opener in that report! They consider Lee amongst the very best in LF They nominated Valentin for a Gold Glove They mentioned Dye as a top glove RF (broken leg in 2002 .. ouch!) And the biggest shock ... With Lee the White Sox performed close to that of the Minn trio. Big props in that report to Carlos Lee

I took another look at Rowands fielding stats in CF & they actually are pretty decent. His 2.89 RF, & 9.14 ZR is very good. Now maybe it's because he's not played as many innings there but they are much better numbers than both Harris & Perez. Harris' numbers are about 40% less than Rowands & Perez's are about 20% less. Rowand's crushing LH's (1105 OPS), but getting beat by RH's (619 OPS). The abs are about even between the two. Harris is 393 vs LHs & 783 vs RHs & Perez resembles Rowands production. This is the kind of stuff that makes managers pull their hair out How a below avg revenue team has to juggle 3 players to keep them both fresh & get the best matchups. The defensive side ultimately suffers because none of them get accustomed to playing one of the most important defensive posistion on the team. What's a manager to do?

There's more to this trade that just Koch, the $, & the SS. Now Burke & KD can remain with the team. There was worry that if Burke was sent down again he would not clear waivers. So now we can keep the 3 catchers (something Ozzie loves) & a bench IF. Munoz will just replace Koch's spot on the roster. I hope he does well.

http://baseball.espn.go.com/mlb/teams/pitc...Type=2&type=std This actually is a good move for the Marlins. Look at how bad that bullpen has been. Ok, so the SOX have a little less than 2 million more to play with & a nice SS ml. Let's see what KW does now.

Defensively our OF leaves a LOT to be desired :puke Lee Good (5 assists, 1 dp) Harris Poor (1 assist) Perez Below Avg Gload Below Avg Rowand Fair Maggs Fair I just don't think you can win a division w/out being solid defensively in the OF. Defensively our Bullpen leaves a LOT to be desired :puke Shingo Great Marte Good Adkins Fair Cotts Below Average Politte Poor Jackson Poor How do you win a division with that kind of bullpen?

If he was able to save 2 MIL off Koch's salary in the move then KW

The Wall Street Journal has been doing a good job at covering the story on job growth & job sourcing in America for well over a year now. 1) Foreign-outsourcing: This is occuring en-masse in software, call support, & manufacturing. Foreign engineers are being fitted with terminals to over-see production of automated lines in America. The WSJ did a big story on this & it's impact on mechanical & robotics engineers in America. This is likewise becoming predominant in back-office operations such as accounting, claims processing, legal processing, & other clerical work. It's raised issues of privacy of American's personal data being shipped overseas. 2) Foreign-job-transfer: Global companies operating in America are using a loop-hole to replace American engineers & high skilled labor with cheaper foreign ones. The loop-hole is that the cheaper foreign ones are employees with the Global company before the transfer is processed. This is creating departmental wide job loss. As I understand there are practically no limits to which a company can do this. The Wall Street Journal has predicted a bad scenario where high skilled labor in America might actually start moving overseas to find jobs by the end of the decade. There's a joke that for years American's have always referred to working at McD's in your late 30's or 40's would be the worst possible scenario. The WSJ has painted a scenario where that job might not even be available in the next decade. It's happening so fast that I don't even the govt can get a grip on it. The thing I don't think politicians are aware of is that there are two stages when clerk jobs go overseas: 1) The foundation stage. The infrastructure gets laid down to support the networking & back-office processing to facilitate the work. This state usually sees trickle job loss. 2) The implementation stage. When the foundation state is set down, then whole depts are lost. We will probably be long into the implementation stage by the end of this decade.

Deja Vu. As far as the money goes this smells an awful lot like what the Mets & Rangers did with the CWS last year. Tex & Mets paid their salaries & CWS shipped league minimum for each prospect traded. It's probably Koch + 4 mil to Marlins for Valdez + 400K.

The SOX probably are paying for Koch's salary so the Marlins threw in a few 100K for Valdez. Now we just need to trade Politte & we might have a chance.

They just announced in on WGN!

Because they don't have a good defensive option in CF & you can't win a pennant without one.

Who would Cameron be replacing in the OF? Doh!

With respect to Dye & Magglio, I've responded to this already so I'm not sure what you are trying to say. http://www.soxtalk.com/index.php?showtopic=20579&st=45# With respect to Maggs vs Frank 2003 I agree with you on your point. The gap betw Frank & Maggs was small enough to where Maggs would have been considered the MVP of the SOX. With respect to Maggs vs Frank 2002, Maggs beat Frank in RPG so it's indisputable. With respect to Maggs vs Frank 2001, Frank was out so there is nothing to compare. With respect to Maggs vs Frank 2000, Frank beat Maggs by 33% in RPG. No contest. Frank has how many MVPs? And Maggs? Frank is how likely to enter the HOF? And Maggs? Frank is how likely to end his career with the SOX? And Maggs? Which is the bigger draw? The SOX-lifer,future HOFer Frank or Maggs? I doubt if there is an ounce of fat on Frank. He still looks like a tight end

Umm .. ok. If that's what you feel the debate was about then sure. You won that debate. Maggs was unequivocally better than Dye in years 2001-2003. Now I might be wrong I think the debate is about how much value Maggs has to the Sox & how much of the payroll should be allocated to him. I'm pretty sure Dye was simply used an example for how much he's currently worth to the A's & how much of the payroll he's eating up. Wrt to moneyball: A's team era: 3.91, SOX 4.36. Zito's era 4.76.