caulfield12

The risk is that we might actually be able to compete....with the team, as is. We can survive Santos being gone, but probably not losing Sale/Thornton in the pen and one of our starters. We can also survive the loss of Quentin, probably....if at least 2 of Rios/Dunn/Beckham have All-Star caliber seasons and Viciedo hits as expected.

QUOTE (PolishPrince34 @ Dec 21, 2011 -> 06:25 AM) High school players who turned out really good right from the beginning: Kershaw, McCutthen, Kemp, Hosmer, Cahill, Fielder, Wright, Sizemore, Pujols, and the list goes on. Some of are better picks with upside the last couple years were high school players: Thompson, Heindenreich, Holmberg, Ravelo. The problem is their weren't many. I'm tired of drafting relievers using a high draft picks: McMilllen, O'Neil, Soptic, Bellamy, Jones. Kenny/Laumaun need to be more open minded and stop mostly focusing on drafting college players with not much upside to them at the Ages of 23-24 who won't be called up until they are 25-26 years and then struggle for the first year or two when arriving to the majors: Everyone missed on Pujols when he was at Fort Osage high school in KC with greg775. Especially the Royals, he was in their backyard. Although I'm almost positive he had at least one year of junior college. Hosmer and Moustakas, those guys were consensus top 5-10 picks. When have we ever drafted that high? Kemp and McCutcheon definitely have (had) some ups and down as well. Hosmer wasn't dominating for a 1B, he was "good" but AL average.

QUOTE (SOXOBAMA @ Dec 20, 2011 -> 11:37 PM) Viciedo will be great on this team as a part time DH/4th OF. I am all about pitching and defense. Not in USCF. Remember, the Mariners already tried this model and it failed miserably because of the lack of offense. Viciedo, without Quentin in the line-up and with Konerko due for a down season, simply has to be in the everyday line-up. The MAIN reason we failed this year was offense...with the exception of Pierre (who was supposed to give us at least decent defense).

Would have to guess they're going to wait and see how things play out with Viciedo and Aroldis Chapman before they invest $30+ million in another Latin American player. We really don't need another outfielder right now, unless he's a pure centerfielder and true leadoff hitter. And those guys have been elusive for CF ever since he became the GM.

QUOTE (thxfrthmmrs @ Dec 20, 2011 -> 09:00 PM) Not quite. That's not my "interpolation". The Sox need to spend money on the draft immediately if they are committed to rebuild. We cannot wait till the bulky contracts coming off the book then spend on the draft. What I am trying point out is that with Peavy, Dunn and Rios contract in the book, we won't have the ammo to sign key players to rebuild. And we most likely won't rebuild through free agency, unless we get rid of one of those contracts, which would be a long shot. We cannot afford to wait for these contracts to come off the book then rebuild the team. With the trading chips we have now, especially after the new CBA, we won't get many, if any, top tier prospects in return. If we are really committed to rebuild, we need to spend money internationally and through the draft. Thanks to the new CBA, we have to. How much? We don't know. If we fill the roster with mostly guys in house, and not make any significant free agent signings, we can allocate an extra $4-6 mil on the draft. Which would be tremendous. That's the ideal goal, but like some mentioned, unlikely. You mentioned HS kids like Thompson are hit or miss. But isn't that true for ALL prospects? We didn't have much success with some of the "safer" picks we have had. There are teams like the Rays who continually have success in developing HS kids, like Moore, Jennings, Hellickson, etc. It's not entirely impossible. But that's besides the point. I am not advocating in drafting more HS players, but I think we need to increase spending on the draft and international signing in order to rebuild the big league team and our farm system. Well, we know all the issues with the Dominican. The lack of results in Venezuela has beeen troubling, to say the least. And the "win now" mentality is what usually has us drafting collegiate players who can contribute more immediately, like Sale and Beckham. Maybe the other problem is the poor results we've had in the past when taking young high school pitchers like Jason Stumm and Kris Honel in the first round. Other than that, you have Ramirez/Viciedo/Iguchi/Takatsu. And the other downside is with high school players, they're peaking between 26-30, so most guys like Harper, for example, their most productive years will be during that late 20's period with another team. You have to put up with all the growing pains at the big league level...think Delmon Young, for one example. Very few high school players end up dominating from the beginning like an A-Rod or Ken Griffey, Jr.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 20, 2011 -> 07:38 AM) $51.7 million is the posting fee. Stupid, stupid money. http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=AplT...gers_fit_122011 Mr. Passan disagrees.

I looks forward to teams paying 50-60 Mil, from a 32-33 year old outfielder who has to start out in A ball, and at his best is an .850 OPS Player. Sounds like the right move from them Orioles, Laughing at this random comment in the Cespedes thread at MLBtraderumors. A 50 inch vertical tops Jordan by an inch or so.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 20, 2011 -> 08:21 PM) How many guys that they overlook/let go actually succeed at the major league level? Not many. Michael Morse was basically a throw-in with the Garcia deal since at the time he didn't have one strong defensive position, the ability to stay at SS or the power to play 3B/LF. And it took him 5+ years to have a real MLB impact.

It's karmic retribution for the botched Sirotka/David Wells move, lol. As far as the Edwin Jackson deal goes, it all is now on Zach Stewart's shoulders. We're not going to get Daniel Hudson Lite, but a serviceable 4/5-ish back of the rotation type of guy is critical from a future payroll standpoint.

QUOTE (southsideirish71 @ Dec 20, 2011 -> 06:20 PM) Well how about actually doing something in the international signing period besides watching other teams invest in it. What will we spend. The minimum required to field a draft. They will throw a decent slot offer to the 1st rounder. After that its slim pickings. Don't think about high school guys. More Jared Mitchell clones. Don't forget Mr. Walker. It is amusing that the guys like Doyle and Kuhn who actually succeed are always overlooked...by scouts/talent evaluators/front office personnel.

We have no choice but to compete with Rios and Dunn, and Peavy to a lesser extent. It is possible to compete in the AL Central "as is" but it certainly won't be easy without Floyd OR Danks and Thornton. We can live without Quentin's production if Viciedo produces, which is a 90% probability. There's also a 90% probability that Quentin will miss a significant portion of games, inevitably lowering his trade value. The other choice is an onerous that is very unlikely to occur, which is packaging one of those 3 contracts (perhaps along with Beckham) with the quality assets we have to trade in Danks/Floyd/Thornton/Quentin and perhaps Alexei Ramirez or Paul Konerko if the right pieces of a deal fall into place. Frasor/Crain could also be included as a sweetener, particularly Crain. The problem with trading an Alexei Ramirez is that he's not easily replaced by Escobar or Martinez. But it's obviously something that will have to be considered over the next 12-15 months. Your "interpolation" that with all the contracts like Peavy, AJ, Danks, Quentin (and probably Thornton) off the books that we will be putting that money back into the draft is unlikely, except for the potentially higher first and second round (supplemental, etc.) draft picks. As far as high school players with "upside," Trayce Thompson is a pretty good example. The problem is that for every 20 raw "diamonds in the rough," you're only going to hit on 2-3 of them. Of course, the more you have in your organization with that kind of talent and physical package, the better off you will be. It's a numbers game. Fairly easy to look back at all the depth in pitching we had between 1998-2002 (when we were the #1 farm system in baseball with Borchard, Garland and Rauch as the centerpieces).....that almost none of them had the MLB careers projected for them.

Danks isn't worth $15 million per season for 5-6 years to this franchise, not at this point. There's just too much downside risk to those bigger pitching contracts. And he's certainly not likely to sign a long-term deal averaging $10-12 million per season coming off a down year like he just had.

Of course, the first stories we heard on Dice-K was that he could throw 200-250 pitches in a game or routinely in between starts workouts. Obviously, that didn't work out so well in the end.

QUOTE (Kalapse @ Dec 20, 2011 -> 12:04 AM) And Passen broke it. Good for him. Jeff Passan. Where was Cowley? In mom's basement?

MI: Ghost Protocol is really excellent. I can't imagine how scary some of those sequences in Dubai would be in an IMAX theatre. Just watching them doing all the stunts on a laptop was bad enough. Jeremy Renner more than holds his own in a big budget picture and Paula Patton is something of a revelation. Definitely a movie best enjoyed in a theatre setting.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Dec 18, 2011 -> 10:20 PM) That's how I feel. Agreed. Unless it ends up like the Freddy Garcia deal and his agent is willing to negotiate a long-term pact (with say a 3 day window) for him to stay 4-5-6 years down the road with the Yankees, Red Sox, Rangers, etc.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Dec 18, 2011 -> 11:30 PM) That piece, once again, paints Coop as a creep. Don't kill the messenger. Just the take I got from reading it. s***, Danks is on the record in the story. I'm guessing you didn't read through the whole thread. It's been established that the most damaging quote/s in the story didn't come from Danks OR Peavy, but, with a journalistic sleight of hand that painted both with the brush of a conspiracy which has since been debunked. Ozzie was "letting them all sweat," the coaching staff, so if you were one of his coaches, and had been a part of the White Sox organization much longer than Ozzie, wouldn't you be a little concerned about your future as well? If anything Ozzie sealing himself off from the contract negotiations of the rest of the coaches only exacerbated the negative environment that festered. It's like he was leaving the Titanic, but telling his coaching staff to go down with the ship as he was paddling away for his Florida jackpot.

CUe the Marty post....this only strengthens the trade market for Alexei Ramirez, crossing Rollins off the list of available candidates.

See disaster known as 2011 Minnesota Twins (particularly SS/2B) for why this would have been a bad move.

QUOTE (TheHugeUnit @ Dec 17, 2011 -> 09:54 PM) I could see if Danks was 24 and was under control for 4 years at undermarket price, but yeah Danks is a f/a next year... The CBA kind of screws you too. If Danks is dealt during the season teams won't get comp picks for him and GMs aren't dumb, or well some arent. they know this and will exploit it. But then there are 6-8 "mid tier" teams who will be competing next year and might not be able to afford paying Danks $7-8 million for the full season but could definitely swing that contract for just two months....where he might emerge as that one additional starter to put them over the top, particularly a team bereft of lefties. Danks, arguably, had his worse season since 2007 with us. KW has to also be considering that he is likely to pitch better in 2012 and bring his value up to where it belongs in the minds of most scouts and GM's.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 17, 2011 -> 10:03 PM) I can't repeat this enough. The White Sox have zero need for Brett Gardner. The White Sox have 5 outfielders who need playing time right now in the big leagues if you count the Stealth Elf. 5 outfielders for 3 positions, and DH is taken. The White Sox need to find a place for De Aza, Viciedo, and Rios to play this year. Carlos Quentin is already in the way of that. It's the only way we can find out what we have in those guys...all 3 of them have the talent to be legit starting MLB OF's, or at least the contract of them. And Lillibridge flat out earned playing time. Trading for Brett Gardner gives us 6 outfielders. It makes us need to trade Quentin and consigns both De Aza and Lillibridge to the bench or worse, to the DFA list. You might, might be able to pull off moving Lillibridge to SS, but there are 2 SS's on the way up in our minor leagues who can be the backup/young SS in a year or two. Worse still...Brett Gardner is not cheap any more. Brett Gardner is a first year arbitration eligible player this year. I repeat, Brett Gardner is a first year arb-eligible player this year. So we're talking something in the range of $3.5 million this year when the White Sox are uncompetitive...then $6-7 million next year, then $10 million or more if you want to keep him for the 3rd year. Brett Gardner will be half way cheap this year when the White Sox are rebuilding...then will immediately become expensive in 2013, and the White Sox may or may not be in a position to compete in 2013. Brett Gardner is an asset in 2012 for a team that needs outfielders, has money to spend, and wants to compete this year. The White Sox are NONE of these. If they were to actually contemplate taking on Rios' contract, which they PROBABLY wouldn't, he'd have to play somewhere in that outfield. Obviously they're not going to send us Swisher or Granderson back, so who would you suggest would make it work from their point of view? They would have no choice but to play Rios somewhere. Danks and Thornton have very little to no value to the White Sox this season, especially since Matt's not going to be the closer again but he's paid too high for a set-up guy. We already are paying Frasor and Crain too much for a rebuilding team. For all the reasons you're pointing out that Gardner is "bad" for the White Sox, it makes him more appealing to the Yankees to trade him. The main objective would be to get out from under that $35-40 million or whatever it is exactly we still owe Rios. And sure, Alex Rios could play just as well as Swisher did in NYC and KW would look silly and foolish again for giving up on a player. However, that same overpaid player hasn't performed for the Sox in 1 1/2 years. They can still trade Quentin whenever they want. I guess you could argue we have no choice but to trade him and that would give other teams leverage...or more leverage, but that all goes out the window with the first injuries in ST or early April/May. Besides, they know we have to trade Quentin anyway, in order to play Dayan and DeAza. And DeAza's the only logical leadoff hitter in the line-up, and already performed well there in limited opportunities last season. And you said 3 outfield positions, you can add Lillibridge's bat to the DH battle, either against all LHP if Dunn is still struggling or as depth/insurance that Adam completely goes into the tank again in 2012. Yes, I understand that trading Danks and Thornton gives us ZERO margin for error in competing, but it doesn't make it impossible. (Most importantly, it clears one of the two biggest weights around our payroll and gets rid of a clubhouse distraction/cancer, which can have nothing but a positive effect on team chemistry.) And that clears a little room to add a veteran pitcher/FA (someone like a Ben Sheets, Harden or Penny type for additional depth) that you can sign on an incentive-laden deal, another version of Cal Eldred from back in 2000. Trading Quentin, you can get another LHP to go with Ohman and Santiago in the pen, along with a position prospect or two. With Gardner and DeAza in the line-up, we'd have a lot more athleticism than we've had in recent years (no, Rios doesn't count the way he's dogged it). With Viciedo and Quentin at 1B/DH, you could even play Gardner, DeAza and Lillibridge together. AT THE VERY LEAST, watching that outfield and the multiple line-up options with the top and bottom of the order would be exciting for a change. And yeah, it's possible you wouldn't have enough pop, but you would still have Konerko, Viciedo, Dunn, Ramirez, AJ and Morel (assuming he hits with the power he showed the final 6 weeks), and Beckham can hopefully hit again sometime with the White Sox as well.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 17, 2011 -> 08:09 AM) Well with Reyes down there, he can count on at least a months worth of playing tim e. Not to mention Hanley Ramirez. So I would imagine 2B and 3B would be his best options for PT as a back-up.

QUOTE (MAX @ Dec 17, 2011 -> 12:18 AM) Rios + Danks for a player to be named later. Someone would do it. You'd have to throw in Thornton, too. Something like Rios, Danks and Thornton (because Boone Logan was their first lefty out the pen for most of the season) for Gardner or minor leaguers. Personally, I feel it would be better to hold onto Rios for at least another half season and see if he can turn it around again.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Dec 16, 2011 -> 09:07 AM) Hard to really compare those two. Willingham is going to be an everyday starter, not a sometime DH. Plus, Thome is one of the greatest power hitters of his generation, even into the twilight of his career. Willingham is a good power hitter, but he seemingly wont have the luxury that Thome had with Kubel and Cuddyer in the lineup picking him up when he slumps. Willingham whiffed 150 times last year, thats a lot of wasted opportunities, and the Twins org doesnt really like to waste any opportunities. I could be wrong, he could have a Hardy revival Trading away Hardy for a so-so middle reliever, not replacing him at all (the Japanese MI failed miserably) and then having to admit the wrongness of the Delmon Young deal...those deals, along with totally gutting the bullpen with the exception of inexplicably bringing back Capps (to justify the trade)....goodbye, Mr. Smith.

QUOTE (spiderman @ Dec 16, 2011 -> 09:29 PM) Good point on Floyd - I think he's under contract for 2 more seasons meaning his contract would be a fixed cost for the Pirates. He does make good coin, but another benefit of acquiring him is that they could move him next off-season or before the trading deadline prior to his free agency if the Pirates are unable to contend and perhaps recoup a prospect. Floyd would seem to be a good option for any of the mid/smaller markets team in need of pitching. I think he would have more of a market than Danks right now with Danks impending free agency and his contract demands. That's a big financial committment and prospects. Except there's not really a compelling reason to trade Floyd, unless we're bowled over with an offer. Definitely, we could be competitive by 2013, the last year of his contract. We know he'll be wildly inconsistent within the course of the season but put up the same numbers he normally does at year's end. and we need a stabilizing veteran presence to balance things out with Peavy obviously leaving after 2012 and Danks already on the way out of town. I'd keep Floyd, and just pencil him in as the #3 starter the next two years. That gives you Sale and Molina to be the frontline starters, Humber as your 4 and Stewart, Axelrod, Santiago and Petricka to battle it out for the back end of the rotation/longman spot.