witesoxfan

I honestly don't know Von Hayes, so I have no context with which to compare it too, though I'm sure others do. I can also look it up but with no knowledge of the time, I can't do much. Milton was a mediocre pitcher and Victor Zambrano was terrible. AJ did have an all-star appearance with the Twins, though I'm not sure how justified it was. That is the type of trade that is one in a million though - I don't think you can ever ask for a better return. None of those guys that were traded were stars. The White Flag trade is a pretty good example of it too. I recall Barcelo being the prize of that package and his arm disintegrated with each successive pitch. Howry and Foulke - two relievers - were all the White Sox had to show for a starting pitcher with an ERA in the low 3's, a great reliever, and a solid mid to back end of the rotation starter (who was at the tail-end of his career).

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Apr 21, 2011 -> 05:39 PM) No one gives a flying f*** about your fantasy team. like

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Apr 21, 2011 -> 04:39 PM) Mental rest my bottom. He's getting a timeout for playing bad baseball. I think that's probably part of it too, only you said it in a more humorous and relative manner.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 21, 2011 -> 12:49 PM) Does the first Freddy Garcia trade fall there? He was the top starter on the market at the time IIRC. I think when he was traded to Chicago, that one definitely does. He was having a fantastic season with Seattle and the Sox gave up 2 really good looking young players and a throw-in guy with some upside. None of those guys did anything with Seattle. When he was traded from Chicago to Philadelphia though? I don't think so. His fastball was around 89 MPH when he was traded and if not for a fantastic September would have probably ended the year with an ERA over 5. As it was, he ended at 4.53. He may have been the best starter on the market, but he was still a #2-3 starter at best - not exactly a star.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Apr 21, 2011 -> 03:10 PM) And Tulo plays elite defense at that premium position. I think you can make a legitimate argument that Tulowitzki is the best player in the game, or at the very least, the most valuable when considering present day production and the likelihood of success into the future. He hasn't even hit the typical prime years yet and he's already this good. Personally, I'm stoked that he's in the NL West.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Apr 21, 2011 -> 02:56 PM) The expression on that kid's face is priceless. via the front page of the Trib "Cauliflower penis? I *hate* vegetables"

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Apr 21, 2011 -> 02:24 PM) Per everyone's Twitter, Brewers sign Ryan Braun to 5 year, $105 million extension for the years 2016-2020. Including this year, that locks him up for 10 years. Not sure why you do this. I think Braun is a great hitter and really is the face of that franchise at this point, but he's not an elite player. I understand giving 10 years to Troy Tulowitzki because he's easily the best shortstop in the major leagues. Braun? He just hasn't put up enough to really be worth $21 mill a year from '16-20. He did have some signs of progress last year even though his overall numbers were down, as his BB% increased and his K% decreased. Perhaps it's a sign of things to come and he'll have his first full season with a 1.000 OPS. I tend to doubt it.

QUOTE (docsox24 @ Apr 21, 2011 -> 01:53 PM) So with dunn currently hitting like kotsay, this is basically the same crap offense we had last year Atleast Dunn mixes it up with walks and strikeouts. Kotsay's 4-3 putouts got old real fast.

In 19th century attire sending a Haiduken my way. Not sure I'd be here to tell you about it if it happened.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Apr 21, 2011 -> 02:30 PM) Look, jerk. You already got on my bad side by not dropping a perfect plex on Val Kilmer. Let's not take this to the next level. He was Doc Holliday, Iceman, AND Batman. The dude would have no problems wrecking my s*** if I crossed his path. Ain't no way I'm doing that.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Apr 21, 2011 -> 02:14 PM) Obvious sarcasm, guy. Do you really think I'd be stupid enough to blow up immediately after I just made a post about having healthy arguments and discussion? Yes I do

Scar Tissue Issues is a sweet phrase

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Apr 21, 2011 -> 08:42 AM) Colon for Sizemore/C. Lee/Phillips/Lee Stevens? Yeah, I was just reading about that trade yesterday. That's 2 in like 10 years. There have been a hell of a lot more than 2 stars traded within the past 10 years.

If and when Williams goes, I'd hope the Sox would let Hahn run the ship for a little bit. He does bring some advanced metrics to the table and has proven extremely valuable to the White Sox in general. That actually makes the most sense to me, and considering how often Reinsdorf has hired from within recently, that seems like a likely scenario.

QUOTE (bucket-of-suck @ Apr 21, 2011 -> 01:10 AM) As soon as this team started bunting into triple plays, f*cking around on defense and blowing multiple, 3- run 9th inning leads, the Baseball Gods decided to pi$$ on them for week or so. Their penance will end soon boys, and when it does they'll start rolling again. This kind of blind optimism bugs me too. There are some legitimate concerns with this team and, due to these concerns, it's possible they can go into a month or two month long funk. The rotation has quite a bit of talent but subbing Humber in for Peavy brings it down quite a bit, especially since Floyd has shown that he can go into sustained slumps, Jackson can be extremely erratic (though I personally think he's going to be just fine), and Buehrle has begun to show some signs of wear and tear over the years and I don't think you can count on anything more than a 4.25 ERA, which IS valuable in its own right. And, though I think the bullpen is going to be fine in the long run, it's still a bit of a concern as well. I think Thornton will be fine in the long run and Sale, Santos, and Crain should all be solid (though I think Crain will come back down to earth a bit as well). But Ohman is really only good to get an out here or there, Pena is terrible, and Gray isn't a major league reliever. So, in all reality, the Sox offense could heat up at the exact time the pitchers start to unravel a bit too. I think there are some concerns with the offense as well, but not as many, Morel and Beckham being the biggest of those concerns. I do still think it's a good team, but honestly, a lot depends on Peavy - not just because of Peavy himself, but because of what it does to the entire pitching staff. If he can get back to being even a 4.00 ERA pitcher for the Sox, it makes the rotation extremely strong - replacing a 5.00-5.50 ERA pitcher with that will do wonders - moves Humber to the mopup role, where I think he'll be solid, moves Pena to about a 6th inning role where he can be put into low or middle leverage situations, and leaves the big 4 to handle the 7th, 8th, and 9th. It also allows the Sox the tiniest bit of depth in case another starter gets hurt, because Humber can probably prove to be an adequate fill-in type. If Peavy doesn't get back to full health, then the Sox are stuck with Humber in the rotation and god forbid what happens to it if someone else goes down.

There are a few arms in the lower minors that have me genuinely excited. I really like Rienzo and Petricka, and Reed seems to have good stuff too. Does Reed project as a starter long-term? It seems from everything I've read he has the necessary pitches to do so, but he pitched mostly out of the bullpen for Great Falls and has done so with Kanny too.

QUOTE (SoxPride56 @ Apr 20, 2011 -> 11:54 PM) Reason for optimism? Because no matter how bad it gets, at least Ozzie won't be around in 2013. Because the world is ending on December 21st 2012, duh

QUOTE (zenryan @ Apr 20, 2011 -> 08:00 PM) Here in Cleveland? I didnt know we still had a team.. Yep, we have uniforms and everything. QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Apr 20, 2011 -> 09:21 PM) You're obviously being condescending. But no GM in the central had come close to pulling off as many shrewd (and in most cases straight ripoff) trades as Shapiro since mid-2006. 1: Asdrubal Cabrera for Eduardo Perez 2: Shin-Soo Choo for Ben Broussard 3: Carlos Santana for Casey Blake 4: Justin Masterson for Victor Martinez 5: Chris Perez for Mark Derosa Sure, the Sabathia trade isn't lookin' so hot. And it's still too early to truly judge the Lee trade from their side. But those are 5 terrific trades in a short amount of time. If he had the freedom to spend $100+ million, no telling what he could do. Masterson for Martinez? The other 4 are obvious, but Masterson hasn't been good with Cleveland and Victor was great with Boston and I'm about 99% sure he was a Type A free agent too. The other two Cleveland got in that trade have been quite mediocre. Honestly, it seems to me that trading elite players away just doesn't work out well and that, instead, you are better off making tons and tons of small trades. You aren't going to get Shin-Soo Choo and Carlos Santana for league average players at all times, but you are giving up very little overall in terms of production and have the ability to add so much more to your ballclub. The only trade of a really good player I can think of that resulted in a big gain for the trading team was the Teixeira to Atlanta deal, and Atlanta gave up a monster of a package to acquire him.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 20, 2011 -> 02:58 PM) Wait, why are these 2 being compared? Just to establish a frame of reference. Yuniesky Betancourt walks very, very, very little. He set a career high in walks last year with 23.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Apr 20, 2011 -> 03:20 PM) The Sox have the fifth highest win percentage in the AL since 2004 behind the yankees, red sox, angels and twins. Which is both good and bad; good, because it's a good record. It's bad because, if everything were to remain constant throughout, the Sox would be the first team out every single year.

Gallagher keeps on truckin'

In 686 plate appearances last year, Daric Barton drew 110 walks. In 3120 plate appearances in his career, Yuniesky Betancourt has drawn 106 walks.

QUOTE (Harry Chappas @ Apr 20, 2011 -> 10:13 AM) Which is why I am not certain the Royals are the lock they are portrayed to be I can confidently say that atleast one of these big time Royals' prospects won't make it. In fact, 3-5 of them probably won't end up being much more than a bench player. But when their 15th and 20th rated prospects are as good as several teams 2-5 prospects, it gets really scary. There would have to be a ton of them that fail - like 75% - for them to not become a contender. QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 20, 2011 -> 11:38 AM) I blame this on Greg Walker. I remember the Phillies doing that for a few stretches last year too. That offense just goes cold at times. This year, it's a bit more understandable, considering they've been relying upon Wilson Valdez to man 2B for them and Ben Francisco is playing RF for them and hitting 5th. They miss Utley and they miss Werth.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Apr 20, 2011 -> 09:45 AM) It's pretty cool that Will Forte is such a nice guy. I guess it's not surprising, as he doesn't throw off the vibe of being a dick. Two questions: -Is Val Kilmer still heavy? -Did you quote Tombstone? Val looks really good actually. He's bigger than he was when he was in his mid 20s, which goes without saying, but he has been on a pretty strict diet recently and has been working out and looked really good. And I had fully planned on at least dropping the Huckleberry line, but had I done that I think I probably would have been sent away. I did tell Will that my favorite character of his was Pall Willeaux. QUOTE (flippedoutpunk @ Apr 20, 2011 -> 09:53 AM) Pics or it didnt happen...

QUOTE (whitem0nkey @ Apr 20, 2011 -> 12:56 AM) having the best minor leagues means your not making your pro team better. BTW go sox, lets get going. I didn't suggest they needed to have the best minor league system - the Twins don't and haven't for years - but having some semblance of production from your minor league system gives you 6 years of relatively cheap production. If you don't have that, you have to pay someone $4 million to put up a .270/.330/.350 line in left field.