witesoxfan

Pedro Feliz will be their 3Bman next year.

They have said that they'll give up the draft pick if they have to though.

Just updated several players. Guess that's what happens when you get bored.

We just ignore you...duh, I thought everyone knew that I can get it

I played on Thursday, and I played alright...didn't make any money, but whatever, it's for the entertainment, right? Anyways, last hand of the day, I look down and see J-J...the guy in first position goes all in, and I figure he's probably just trying to push everyone out and is just messing around because he mentioned that he had to leave very shortly. The guy next to me was deliberating for a long time...I figured he had something like A-10 or A-Q, and was thinking that maybe the guy in front of him had A-J, A-Q, or A-K, or maybe even a pair. He sat thinking about this move for like 2 minutes. I let him know I was going to call, and he still called. The guy in first position flipped up his cards...Q-Q. The guy who was deliberating forever flipped over his cards...K-K. KK, QQ, and JJ on the last hand? That was insane. Also...not sure if anyone has Phil Hellmuth's book of Lucky Draws and Bad Beats...but there is a story in there about some guys playing Omaha, and a guy had the absolute stonecold nuts on the turn, and was drawing dead on the river...any card that came would have given someone a straight, flush, or quads. If I can remember/find the story exactly, or if someone has the book, I'll/someone please post it.

Maybe I worded that wrong. Perhaps we would be a more balanced team at and away from home would be better?

The payroll is currently at $65 mill, give or take. By trading Kong and Garland for RJ, we are adding $5 mill, and from what I have read, payroll will be around $75-77 mill. Therefore, I come to the conclusion that the Sox will have $5-7 mill more to spend. Also something to consider is that if we maybe included a prospect or two in that RJ trade(say one or two of Diaz, Munoz, Baj, et all, types), I'm sure Arizona could pick up some of his contract too. We're not screwed financially if we get RJ, no matter how you look at it.

I'd almost bet that the reference would be to Derek Lowe. Groundball pitcher in a bigtime home run park would make sense. I see no Boras clients signing with the Sox, regardless.

Having guys for the whole year vs having guys for 2 months One costs more money then the other...and I'm not a JR/Sox ownership basher. JMO of course. Hope that helps.

/anything to get his value increased He'll sign with the Angels or Yanks.

With Frank Thomas, Carl Everett, and Carlos Lee too, along with a potential FA signing or a trade along with it. Not that the offense is among the league's best, but you seem like you are making it out to be one of the league's worst, when not only is it almost impossible to have one of the league's worst offenses in the ballpark we play in, but quite frankly, that the offense is not one of the worst offenses in the league. Losing Konerko would do very little to effect the offense...it would hurt us at home, but on the road, we could actually end up benefitting from trading Konerko...his horrid road numbers have been posted before(something like .310 29 70 1.050 at home, .240 12 47 .700 on the road). And all we would really need out of the 5th starter spot is 10-12 wins...his ERA could be 7.00 and I would not care, so long as he got us 10-12 wins. And what's stopping the Sox from dishing out another $1-2 mill and getting a Wilson Alvarez/Paul Abbott/Darren Oliver type via FA and having that pitcher be our #5 starter? It seems that a very good 1-5 rotation is what triggers long stretches of good baseball...you get all 5 of them giving solid outings night after night, and the offense just gets a little hot, and next thing you know you've won 10 of 12. One of the reasons Oakland won 20 in a row a couple years back was their excellent starting pitching(the big 3, plus Lidle had like an entire month where he didn't give up a run). Also, from what I have read, I have seen no indications from RJ whether he will or will not accept a trade to the Sox...it has just said that he wants to be traded. It's still in the wait and see stage.

God I hope these two teams meet in the playoffs, preferably the Eastern Conference Finals

I don't think Jackson will be back for the XMas game. Everything he did was completely out of line. He could end up getting suspended the most games for all this. I think Artest will get suspended 10-15 games...somewhere in that neighborhood. Wallace will probably get 10-15 games as well for being the instigator, but I think O'Neal only gets 5-10 games. O'Neal was fighting, I know that...but IIRC, he did not go into the stands and start fighting people like Artest and Jackson did.

Updated Edited for Glendon Rusch resigning with the Cubbies today too

Statistically, he's been bad these past 2 years...what's that say? His Range Factor/9(I'm not sure if this is using just players who played full games, or if it's using the average range factor and taking it out over a full game...I think it is the former, but someone could probably clear this up) has been below the league average the past 2 years(4.75 with Boston, while the league's average was 4.94, and it was 4.36 with the league average being 5.01, so he was especially bad this past year). The reason he'd been considered good defensively ever before(being statistically or visually) was because he didn't make errors. Over 154 games with the Reds in 2002, he made a total of 8 errors. The next year, with Boston, in 15 fewer games, he made twice as many errors, 16 total. And this past year, he made 7 errors in 89 games. His defense has definately gotten much worse. One thing about his range factor this year though is that he was on a power pitching staff...almost every Cubs pitcher gets a lot of strikeouts, which would take away from his attempts in the field, which would effect his range factor. That being said...he is bad defensively. Keep him the hell out of here, or atleast away from being our starting 2B.

^^yeah that^^

They would almost undoubtedly bring in a 5th starter from somewhere. They would not depend on Diaz-Grilli-your mom to be our 5th starter again.

Everett prospects... Frankie Francisco is doing the best, logging some very solid MLB innings. However, he had the whole chair throwing incident. Josh Rupe had a solid year in the minors, going from low A ball to start the year and he ended up in AA. His splits were 6-2 3.43 ERA in 63.3 IP between low A, high A, and AA, with a WHIP of 1.42, K/9 of roughly 7 and a K/BB of 1.7. Most of those are dramatically effected because of a rough year once making it to AA. Anthony Webster hit .287 8 44 20-for-24 in SB attempts with an .802 OPS in about 425 plate appearances. That was in low A ball(I believe). A wash, in my book. We won't know the benefits Texas gets from this for a few years. Alomar prospects... Royce Ring went 5-3 3.70 ERA in 63.3 IP between AA and AAA this year, with a WHIP of 1.34, with a K/9 of 6.4, and a K/BB of about 2. Nothing too spectacular Edwin Almonte posted a 5.50 ERA for the Red Sox AAA team. That's all you need to know. Andrew Salvo played for an independent league team. Damn, we got ripped off in that deal.

Or we could sign Ismael Valdes, Glendon Rusch, Matt Kinney, hell, even Paul Byrd, to be our #5 starter, and then our rotation from 1-5 is very solid. That costs us, what, an extra $2 mill? If the Sox got Johnson, I would have to imagine that JR would realize we are going for it all and would make a minor signing like that.

Don't forget...

What started out as a fun little message board just over 2 years ago has turned into one of the hottest White Sox message boards on the Internet. Good job guys...keep it up

I pray to God every day that Russ Ortiz is not in our rotation. And I'm almost serious too. I want no piece of him. He's not a real good pitcher. I do not want Todd Walker playing 2B for us next year. Not saying I don't like him as a hitter, just saying that he is not good defensively, and I think being strong up the middle defensively is very underrated by a lot of people.

Why wouldn't he? He can always demand a trade at the ASB if we are tanking it, and we can honor his request and get a ton of value for him in return. He might look at how we have been close the past couple years, and think he might push us over the top. He might see a weak division where the top team is going to get weaker(already lost their starting SS and will likely lose their starting 3Bman and their #2 starter). Hell, he might push for KW to go get Kendall, and if we got Unit, Kendall would look at the Sox and see a much more attractive team. There's a lot of possibilities still. I wouldn't mind RJ one bit.

That was a great pickup by the Sox too. Flash was a very solid arm out of the pen.

2000 was a fluke. I explained it in another thread, and it has been explained multiple other times too. In the technicality of it, he did take over a division winner...but that team's core needed a bunch of changing, because that pitching was not playoff caliber ever at any point.