caulfield12

To imagine David Wright on the 2012 White Sox with almost $60 million already tied into Dunn/Rios/Peavy/Konerko/AJ....not seeing how it's possible. Even if we traded them Quentin/Danks/Thornton, it's not a logical trade long-term for a Mets team trying to compete right now but dealing with financial issues with the Madoff suit that are potentially debilitating. Think of the Ubaldo Jimenez deal. They would want Sale, Viciedo and Alexei Ramirez (if they can't keep Reyes). Making that trade from the Sox standpoint would be close to insane. You get rid of Danks AND Buehrle AND Quentin to fit David Wright onto the payroll, you're not any better than you started off, and probably worse...because starting pitching is the team's strength and now all of a sudden it's a huge weakness.

this week DET AT CLE ....(Tue-Thurs) then DET AT BALT (after our four-game sweep) MINN AT CLE So Cleveland sweeps DET at home, then Minnesota sweeps the Indians (not likely, but hey, why not?) Definitely do-able to get within 3, and possibly 2 games back of the Tigers by the end of this week. Realistic? Not so much. Possible. Sure.

Too bad we can't switch Mitchell's statline with GAC....or change Gac's name and age, lol. Looking at that box score everyday, almost hoping that we can get something out of Silverio. Doubtful. And Saladino's also been sliding backwards a bit average-wise.

No, Greg, don't go to the dark side, too. I'm going to take the optimistic route and say they have a pretty good chance to make it...but they have to make up some ground next week. Who are DET and CLE playing against? If Humber can come back around (50/50, right?) with the six-man rotation giving him more recovery time, and Rios and Lillibridge play like they have the last two games, they could actually do it. You have to like what you saw out of Carlos Quentin too, 2 opposite field doubles. Harrelson's right, he does that consistently and he's a .285-.305 hitter and close to MVP level again. He's just so naturally strong, he doesn't need to pull everything to collect homers all over the diamond.

Nope, the Pirates need players they can control at LEAST 3-4 years. That doesn't fit with what's really best for their long-term interests. At least the Indians have Jimenez for 3 years at "cheap" rates.

"Just Win, Baby!"

I just meant they have a hangover of problems inherited from JP. LF, you need something better than Thames or Rajai Davis long-term. And Drabek has obviously regressed this season. That has to be a bit of a concern. And it's still a big difference when you can have a pitcher for 2 full seasons (Marcum) versus just one or 1 1/3rd (Danks). If you're KW, it's hard to know what's going to happen with Buehrle. You can't trade Danks AND lose Buehrle if you hope to compete in 2012. Floyd, Peavy, Humber, Stewart, Sale That would be the starting rotation. Try selling season tickets with that. Good luck. Just losing Buehrle or Konerko alone will drive them into the low 20,000's per game unless they lead the division for most of the way like in 2008 and get off to a hot start (in other words, the opposite of the last 2 seasons).

Team seemed much more relaxed with Lillibridge out there instead of Dunn at 1B. You have to go with Brent against LHP, and you'd have to argue that it's also going to help Paulie a lot to DH the final two months...if Brent were only taller and had more experience with scoop plays (needed with Alexei and Morel over there)....but he has so much more range and athleticism than Paulie at 1B. Peavy's now had two positive starts in a row. That's huge. Now the big question becomes Humber. We have to go 6-1 or no worse than 5-2 the next 7 games, and, once again, at least get back to .500. Baltimore has been playing like crap, but that hasn't meant much when the Sox faced them the last 2-3 seasons. They play like the Royals against us for some reason. Showalter is a huge jackass, and it'd be so nice to beat these guys when they're really down.

Arencibia's really struggling the second half of this year. Aaron Hill has regressed. 3B has been a train wreck for TOR for quite awhile now (obviously they feel they have a solution for that problem). And Travis Snyder has been one of the biggest disappointments they've had in half a decade. So they've made a lot of great moves on paper to put themselves in position. As Ozzie says, "the big leagues is all about performance/winning, and not development." In the end, the jury's still out on what has actually been accomplished. As usual, 3-5 years out will give a much better picture.

C'mon Morel. If you're going to have a 585 OPS, at least MOVE THE RUNNER to 2B. That's all we're asking. Not a double, not a homer, just a productive AB.

C'mon Morel. If you're going to have a 585 OPS, at least MOVE THE RUNNER to 2B. That's all we're asking. Not a double, not a homer, just a productive AB.

Peavy starting off with his 90 MPH fastball....again. Nothing close to 92-95 MPH. At least for the moment. Usually he picks up a couple of MPH over the first 2-3 innings and levels off. Rare slider strikeout against Thome there. Perfect location, couldn't have place it in there any better if he walked it up to the plate.

16 times Dunn has had 3 strikeouts (or more) and no hits in a game... Has already broken the all-time MLB season record in that category, with almost two full months left to go. Beckham strikes out on a fastball again. What new?

Lilli-Elf. Start him over Dunn for the rest of the season as the DH, at least against LHP. Why not?

Rios 7/15 career against Duensing with only 4 staying in the park.

Or take back the Javy deal and stick Chris B. Young in CF. That would be a pretty potent line-up. Quinarv, where is Chris Sale in your line-up/roster rendition? Starting in Charlotte or Birmingham? Rotation depth? 2B is another obvious weakness with Getz. Keeping Uribe would have solved that infield issue (yeah, I know it wasn't realistic to pay him as a starter heading in 2009). But it was a big mistake not to keep him on the roster SOMEHOW. You really can't play Juan Pierre in CF, either. It would have to be Viciedo in RF, Sweeney in CF and Pierre in LF. Not with Juan's arm.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_leagu...urn=mlb-wp15224 Leyland responds to crazy, profane fan mail. What would it take to get Ozzie to notice a complaint or letter? I can't imagine it. Maybe when he first became the manager, but not recently.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 7, 2011 -> 11:35 AM) Nathan has given up 7 career HR to the White Sox. Wow...were any those while he was a starter for the Gigantes? Carlos Lee? I just don't remember any save-blowing homers or walkoffs against him. Maybe one of the games in 2010 that he blew against us? I think there might have been one this year already, too. Maybe their first victory against Minnesota this season, can't recall off the top of my head because I was unable to watch that one.

Or Humber the first 3 months. Or no Santos, although they could have gone with Sale in hindsight. Probably at the time though, Ozzie would have gone to Crain first, then Sale as the 3rd option. At any rate, Chris Sale wasn't ready to close any games until halfway through this season.

He looked like he belonged in the big leagues, that's for sure. Not panicked or nervous. Getting Mauer in that situation was huge. Obviously, having 3 prior starts helped, but it was impressive. Really did all those things with just 2 pitches, and Dunn didn't help at all. The game shouldn't have been as close as it was...but we can't hit for shi- with RISP these days.

With Juan Uribe, he was the glue/rock/center of that clubhouse. He also was the bridge between the white, black and Hispanic players...equally popular with everyone in the clubhouse. That player no longer exists, the one to make everyone laugh and who just loves playing the game, almost in the same way Ozzie did. And Uribe was going to be overpaid as merely a bench player...that's true enough. And hindsight helps too, looking at what he did for the Giants, especially winning the World Series last season. The one thing that stands out is that Buehrle was willing to give up at least $1 million of his salary (or defer it) to keep Juan on the Sox. Is there anybody that Mark would come close to saying that about now, with the way things have been the last 2-3 seasons? I think not. Not even for John Danks. Uribe always did the little things like hitting sacrifice flies and coming up with big clutch hits. He wasn't afraid to make a game-changing play defensively, either. I guess he was my favorite player on that Sox WS team, thinking about it now. Either Uribe or Contreras.

Well, I'll give him credit for finally taking Dunn out of the line-up. Just removing his "defense" from 1B will save 1-2 runs per game. Brent deserves a start for hitting a homer off Nathan. How many times has that happened in Sox history? Dye? Who else?

The Hunter deal wasn't a bad contract until this year, especially for a CFer. If you think about it, if we had Hunter for that whole time, we never would have had to pick up Rios. Hunter gave them 3 solid years at least. Granted, next year for Torii doesn't look like a good deal at all. Rios has given us one out of 2 1/2 seasons with the Sox, and we still owe him for at least 3 more. That's the nature of long-term deals for players in their 30's, it almost always comes back to bite you in the end. (Yet another reason why Pujols will get less dollars and years than Prince Fielder but it will still be "one year too many"). Just imagine if we'd been stuck with the Fukudome or Rowand contracts. The only plus is they all would have prevented the Rios deal from being triggered. And who's to say the Dunn deal won't end up being worse than Vernon Wells at THIS POINT? Not to mention that "winning" players like Uribe were unceremoniously shown the door.

Sabean still just won the World Series last year, so hard to argue with that result. Cashman's the Phil Jackson syndrome. Could he ever win with a small-market franchise or do a total rebuild? We'll probably never know. It would be interesting to find out. I'm sure that both he and Epstein have moments that they hear the whispers they could never have success in Pittsburgh, KC, Florida, Seattle, Baltimore, Cleveland, Cincy, Houston, etc. And Angels have still developed/drafted a lot more players than the White Sox over the past decade. Trout alone gives him the edge over KW, not to mention Weaver/Santana, the Saunders for Haren deal, Kendrick, Bourjos, Morales, etc. Sure, a lot of busts, too. But Reagins has the overall advantage. Plus that franchise has a LOT more playoff appearances in the last 10-12 years.

Shapiro's no longer the GM in Cleveland, he got bumped up. Flowers, it seems in hindsight, was largely a product of PED's in terms of his Braves' minor league numbers and AFL stats. Needed to do a bit more due diligence on that one, but obviously hundreds of players have gotten caught up in that. I would take Cashman, Sabean, Reagins, Jocketty and Alderson (based on past performance) over KW as well. Maybe he's a BIT higher, maybe 18-20, but you'd have a lot of argument/s around baseball. I suppose the question would be...were KW on the open market, how many of those teams would bring KW in and let go of their current guy? Alex A. needs to prove that the Blue Jays can come close to contending again in that division before you can annoint him as the best. Daniels would obviously be the "hip" pick as the best GM for his performance the last 2-3 years, but he and KW started out similarly on the learning curve.