caulfield12

11:$5.75M, 12:$7.625M, 13:$11.625M, 14:$13M club option ($0.25M buyout) LESTER's deal I wouldn't be surprised at all if the White Sox offered him something similar to get to year 7 and 8. Although I think they're going to have to pay him $7.5 million next year, $11.5 million in 2012 and then the $13 million club option to buy out one year of free agency. Will he go for it, is the question? And if he turns down this offer (as he did before, the one Gavin Floyd accepted)...how long would KW wait to deal him? Probably this offseason or in July 2011.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Aug 2, 2010 -> 09:20 AM) Pavano actually had a pretty good season last year peripheral wise. It was a great pickup for the Twins at the time. His FIP and xFIP were a whole run lower than his ERA. That horrible Cleveland infield killed him. The Twins' fifth starters in 2003 (Kenny Rogers at the beginning of the year), Livan Hernandez in 2008 and Pavano 2nd half of 2009 all played, at least in my mind, THE crucial roles in those three division titles...and I'm convinced that if they would have dumped Livan about 3-4 weeks earlier, they would have won two years ago. That was the one year where going cheap bit them, along with 2005 and 2007.

It's going to be interesting to see if Damon and Carlos Guillen make it through waivers. Jose Guillen will get through probably. Along with Peavy, the name Grady Sizemore is an interesting one...of course, none of those GM's (DD, Moore or the new Indians' GM) will make it easy on KW...well, I guess technically Shapiro's calling all the shots until the end of the season, right? Finally, Mike Lowell, Wilson Betemit (that's ironic, that he might be more dangerous than Kotsay), Marcus Thames, Nick Johnson...some more names that might be available to the Sox.

What are Jon Lester's contract numbers again? I think that's probably the closest to an accurate comparison...although the very SLIGHT edge probably goes to Lester, but not by much.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 1, 2010 -> 11:42 AM) The moron Cowley sums it up best: He doesn't mention some key points, however. The Twins are still on the hook for Nathan's $11.25 million in 2011, and Capps will get at least $7.5-8.0 million if the Twins decide they want to keep him around. That's a dangerous proposition for any ballclub to sink $18 milllion into two closers. Point 2, and I'll reiterate, the Twins gave up the best two-way (some will argue Posey, but he's already up...along with Santana) catching prospect in the game for someone they might only keep for 2 months. Point 3, Mauer's contract kicks in next year, and they have a number of players like D. Young, Kubel and Cuddyer who are getting more and more expensive. They also have to pay Rauch (and he will want closer's money based on his stats from 2010), Guerrier, Crain, etc. Not a cheap bullpen at all. Baker and Blackburn aren't cheap compared to their level of production and the long-term commitments the Twins have made to them. You can call Jackson a fifth starter, fourth starter...it's like the debates in the past about Javy, Garland, Contreras, etc. If he pitches like he's capable of pitching, then you have two starters with ace stuff in Floyd and Jackson, one who's a hybrid between a Buehrle and an ace (Danks) and another "ace" in Peavy. You could also argue we have two #1 starters and two #2 starters...I hate that whole thing of putting a label on every single starter, since he'll go out there the same number of times as anyone else in the rotation, except perhaps Garcia, who they'll try to rest a bit down the stretch.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=Aksj...sox-guillenrant I will say this much. I agree with him about Hispanic players having a rough time in the low minor leagues...having to go from warm weather climates to strange outputs like the Pioneer League or the New York Penn League or the Appalachian, those are going to be huge adjustments, not only because of the weather, but mostly the culture and environment. When I worked for the Augusta GreenJackets, I sometimes ended up taking responsibility to help the Hispanic players get settled into new apartments, find a ride home after the ballgame, simply ordering at McDonald's was an interesting adventure of pointing and trying to translate "hamburguesas" to the cashiers. One time, I think I had about 6-7 Dominican players altogether trying to go through the drive-through...Jose Guillen probably being the most famous future member of that group. One of the differences is obviously that there are fewer Asian players...and many of the ones who are signed are "big league ready," are signed (usually) for larger contracts than the Latin players and already have their own support staff in place (agent/lawyer, PR/media, physical trainer/conditioning and interprepreter/translator). Some of them pay for their own entourages, but usually the club or even the country where the player originates (say Japan or Korea) are part of the process. I'm sure if you reversed the numbers between Hispanic and Asian ballplayers (what is it, something like 35-40% versus 5%?), there would still be a disparity, but not quite so dramatic. 1) The ballplayers from Korea/Japan often have learned at least intermediate level English in their own countries in preparation for coming to the US 2) The English level in terms of quality of ESL education is higher in Asia than Latin America (usually, but not always) 3) I'm just guessing, but a number of the Asian players come from wealthier backgrounds and have a higher ability (economically) to pay for support staff 4) Whether it's fair or not, usually the Asian player is the only Japanese/Korean/Taiwanese on his particular team...so it's natural that the club/player/agent want to provide a bit more support...whereas they feel if there are X number of Hispanics, especially from the same country, together, that it's not as much of an issue for the players to assimilate 5) There's a huge amount of income generated showing MLB games in Korea, Taiwan and especially Japan...it's in the best interest of the future of the game to smooth communication channels between the East and West, and, fairly or not, because of income disparities again, MLB doesn't generate nearly as much revenue from the Caribbean, Central and South America (although it would love to figure out how to "monetize" interest in this region) I wonder if Guillen has seen the movie "Swing"? I also wonder if KW enjoys Ozzie's comments after all the success we had with Iguchi and Takatsu? Well, at least signing an Asian player usually comes down to money anyways, so I don't think we'll discourage too many Asian players from signing with the Sox and perhaps Ozzie's "us against the world" rant will inspire some Hispanic kid in the Dominican, Venezuela, Mexico or Central America to sign with the Sox.

QUOTE (chisoxfan09 @ Aug 1, 2010 -> 11:55 PM) Caulfield, OT. What time is it in Shanghai? It is almost 8 AM here in Europe (Central time). I wold imagine you are 6/7 hours ahead of me which would make it about 2 or 3 PM. I'm actually in Thailand on vacation...1 minute from ocean, haha. 1257 pm now, roughly 2 pm in China. Sometimes things shift around with DST, but I've always been 12 or 13 hours' time difference from Chicagoland...halfway around the world, although Chicago to Sydney is technically a lot further in terms of distance.

In recent years, names like Adam Dunn, Larry Walker, Jamie Moyer, Brian Giles, Jason Bay and Rickey Henderson have been traded to contenders in August, and those are but a few of many examples. Just last season, we saw 27 trades or waiver claims within the month of August — moves that involved notables such as Billy Wagner, Scott Kazmir, Jon Rauch, Carl Pavano, Jim Thome, Alex Rios, Ivan Rodriguez, Jon Garland and Jose Contreras. So history suggests the trading game in 2010 is far from over. foxsports.com Scott, Dunn, Fielder, Ramirez, Hawpe, D-Lee and Figgins are some of the prominent names being mentioned....

But if you pick up those players on a claim, teams like like the Mets or Cubs would simply let those guys go just to get their contracts off the books. There wouldn't be any negotiating...the only place that would come into play is if the teams wanted someone to take the contracts AND talent in return. Not saying that's the case with either Beltran or Fukudome, just that if they didn't want to make the trade SOLELY for the salary dump, they could also pull that player back.

Well, the Tigers would have possibly made a play for Aramis Ramirez if they weren't already on the hook for Peralta... But I don't think they're convinced they can stay with the Sox and Twins while missing four key components in Inge, Ordonez, Guillen and Zumaya.

Haha...well, there will be many who claimed the "almost" comeback against Jose Paniagua in 2003 shifted the momentum of that series and the entire season. I'm pretty sure the Twins never lost another game to us that mattered from that point onward.

ABANDON ALL HOPE Gary Matthews, Jr. Carlos Lee Vernon Wells Lyle Overbay Alphonso Soriano K. Fukudome Aaron Rowand Travis Hafner Todd Helton Jose Guillen Manny Ramirez Milton Bradley One name that intrigues me a bit is Torii Hunter, but his contract is simply too expensive for Torii and Alex to be playing in the same outfield...simply because I would love to beat the Twins with a former Twin, but it will never happen. But it would have been fun to watch.

Minnesota Twins. Not only did the Twins give up one of their biggest trade chips in Ramos, they got a pitcher in Matt Capps whose cost will be prohibitive with Joe Nathan(notes) returning at $11.25 million next year. A non-tender is almost certain, with Capps due upward of $6 million, which means they gave up six years of a potential power-hitting catcher for a reliever who will throw 35 innings max. It doesn’t matter if you’re getting Mariano Rivera(notes) in his prime: Unless a relief pitcher pulls off some remarkable escapes from trouble and his team wins the World Series, he simply will not be worth six years of a prospect, the first three of which cost only $400,000 a season. Surely Ramos could have fetched a starting pitcher, a far greater position of need than bullpen for the Twins. They’ve got Francisco Liriano(notes), Carl Pavano(notes) and … well, there’s plenty of room on the Kevin Slowey(notes)/Scott Baker/Brian Duensing(notes) bandwagon. passan/yahoosports Jose Guillen is a player there's at least a 33% chance he gets to us...

Pedro Guerrero.

QUOTE (kev211 @ Aug 1, 2010 -> 01:00 AM) Boston won today(technically yesterday) so I don't see how Detroit can sweep. Ooops, I fell asleep here in Thailand and had assumed they had won. Valverde's had a rough two games in a row. He was probably one of the best three-five relievers in baseball before this weekend.

Well, let's see. Three in a row versus us, they did lose 2/3 at home to Cleveland. But then the really easy part of schedule, like we had, 3/4 from the Orioles, swept the Royals 3 in a row, then 2 in a row over the Mariners. The only thing that's disappointing is that the two best Mariners starters (Fister and Felix) didn't win at least one of those games. It will be interesting to see which Detroit team shows up to face us next week...the one from the last two weeks or the team about to sweep the Red Sox in Boston with Verlander on the bump.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 31, 2010 -> 03:24 PM) is this sarcasm? No, I think there were a lot of players who seemed like they would be good fits at DH. Thome, Vladdy and Huff all ended up badly or worse...yet ended up having good to great rebound seasons. If we spent on the likes of Damon or Matsui, that money wouldn't be there now for Jackson, ARGUABLY. Too funny that the M's had to send down Justin Smoak to AAA, btw. Two months ago, the idea of trading Viciedo for Smoak would have been laughed at hysterically. Now at least 50% of MLB GM's would take Dayan, I'd venture.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 31, 2010 -> 03:23 PM) That wasn't just a typical team. The Rays had a very good rotation that year. They had about 6 quality starters. Clearly, Jackson is better than Andy Sonanstine. Shields isn't as good as he was back then either. Garza has been inconsistent but has some of the best stuff east of Gavin Floyd. Back then you had Kazmir.....Niemann and Price coming fast.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 31, 2010 -> 03:19 PM) Buying at the deadline is a perfectly fine strategy, especially when there weren't a ton of great fits at the deadline. You guys all talk about Thome, but he isn't exactly a world beater. He'd clearly be a lot better than Kotsay but he still hasn't been that amazing and no one could have even assumed he'd put up the numbers he has thus far this year. I liked some of the bats this off-season, but quite frankly, outside of Vladdy none of the cheaper DH options have lit the world on fire. I would have loved Matsui, he hasn't exactly been stellar either. The reality is we don't have a huge budget and our team was built to have a studly rotation, good defense, and nice bullpen. That can win a whole lot of games and our offense isn't near as bad as it was for the first two months of the season. It has issues, but a lot of teams have issues. Unless we had a crystal ball with Pods, Vladdy and Aubrey Huff, we'd probably be in an even worse position had we gone with almost any other option out there for DH, because that money for Damon/Matsui (etc.) wouldn't have been available to add Edwin Jackson.

Floyd has an ERA of just a tick higher than 1.00 since June 9th, right? Clearly, he's been one of the best starters in baseball that stretch....now of course I'd still trade him for Josh Johnson, but there's not more than 5 other pitchers in game today you'd rather have. The only question (like with Contreras in 05/06) is how long he can sustain this level of pitching.

Is Morel really ready to play everyday offensively? Agreed that KW will do the same thing he did in the past with our pitching staff and challenge them to sign extensions...both with Jackson and Danks. If Danks can get him a hitter and young starter with upside, then he might have no choice because the contract numbers for him are going to make Dunn's pale in comparison. OTOH, if he waits for Mitchell to be in ready in 2012 (that's really really pushing it developmentally), that might be the year we're best positioned overall from an offensive/pitching and payroll standpoint.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan101 @ Jul 31, 2010 -> 02:57 PM) Are we as good as we were in 2005? Are we going to get as lucky this year as we did in 2005? I don't like to make the 2005 comparisons. Not only was that team really good, it was also really lucky. Who knows? We were SEEMINGLY even better in 2006 than 2005...and we had the best offense in the majors for 3+ months that year. Inevitably, it always comes down to pitching. We have that at least. And a better bullpen than the Twins, even with them adding Capps. We've won 19/20 home games, of course luck plays a part in that too.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan101 @ Jul 31, 2010 -> 02:50 PM) You're speaking in incredible hyperbole today, badger. Optimism is fine, but one of the best pick ups ever? And even if Jackson is good, our offense still isn't good enough. I bet if you compared 2005 offense (after Thomas went down) to the 2010 version, there's not much of a difference....if so, it's pretty negligible. I'm not conceding anything yet.

We have Mitchell and Sale still. You would think it was June 9th and we were looking like one of the worst franchises in the majors. The Twins and White Sox both got a little bit better, but neither took a clear advantage over the other at the deadline.

QUOTE (scenario @ Jul 31, 2010 -> 12:05 PM) Send them Marquez in the deal and maybe you could finally let go of your Swisher trade angst. Don't we still have Nunez, too?