caulfield12

No more than they were "deflated" last year by playing in Birmingham, one of the toughest hitters' parks in the minors.

I'm waiting for them to sign Bonds, Sosa or Palmeiro to play LF. It will remind me of the 2001 season and bringing in Canseco, who actually played pretty well for us, compared to most of the veteran "over the hill" guys we've brought in 3-5 years too late in their careers...they're (Boyer and Co.) going to have to be very creative if they don't want to end up 22nd-26th in MLB attendance.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 16, 2010 -> 03:17 PM) Brian Anderson had just as much talent, IMO. A lot better power. Funny that BA and Borchard will both mostly be remembered for homers (against King Felix, and Joe's huge blast)...and maybe BA's play to end the Game 163 drama. Yet neither one of them could hit for enough "consistent" power (just flashes) to survive. How many times did we hear that BA could put up Torii Hunter's offensive line? I'd say 25 times over a 3 to 4 year period.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 16, 2010 -> 03:16 PM) Of course...there's 1 other option you haven't given...if he keeps hitting, I still think Rios is your best possible trade bait. You save $12 million, and he's the kind of guy that you'd legitimately hold out for a top, A-level prospect in exchange for. This is where we disagree. With so much uncertainty now about Quentin and Beckham, not to mention Alexei Ramirez....I dig my heels in, make a line in the sand and start building around Alex Rios. You would go the Indians' route and gamble you could strike gold with an acquisition where you get 2-3 players back like Sizemore, Phillips and Cliff Lee. If KW could get anything approximating that type of youthful talent infusion, trade Rios, by all means. But teams are wary of parting with young talent. The Yankees might already be regretting the Austin Jackson/Granderson deal. They would be, certainly, if they had to worry a scintilla about their payrolls going forward. It's like "play money" for them.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 16, 2010 -> 03:11 PM) Flowers isn't going to get any playing time unless AJ is moved. He just won't. Ozzie isn't benching a struggling veteran for a kid. Neither would most any other manager. And AJ would probably hate having his replacement up next to him. That would be terrible for the kid too. You could see how uncomfortable this was in ST. It's why Flowers just sort of disappeared, Ozzie's way of avoiding a problem. Obviously AJ doesn't really want to mentor Flowers, he just has too much pride to give up his position or see himself being replaced. It's a very different situation from Cora and Vizquel working with Beckham, Nix and Ramirez. But you have to trade AJ and open up the position, and roll the dice. Trading Flowers for A-Gone or whatever, that's an option no longer on the table. You might completely "bust" him as a prospect, but I don't think so.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 16, 2010 -> 03:10 PM) I'll disagree with you on D2: he has an awful lot still to learn in AAA; he has to learn to hit AAA pitching. He's only hitting .257 with a .705 OPS right now. Supposedly they have him doing legitimate work to shorten up his swing and try to make better contact and cut down on the strikeouts. Flowers is a bit different...not only has he been in AAA for longer, he's been in AA for longer as well, and he's putting up much, much better numbers in AAA than D2. Flowers is striking out a lot, but he's also hitting those pitchers. D2 isn't. It won't matter anyway, unless there's an injury to Jones/Rios/Pierre. No way Danks comes up to sit on the bench, and Ozzie's never going to take Juan Pierre out of the line-up. Rios is ensconced in CF for now, and Danks doesn't bring very much value to the big league roster at the corner OF spots. Theoretically, you could move Rios back to RF and play Danks in CF, but that's close to crazy talk with how well Alex has played, you don't mess with that and take Rios out of CF, you'd play Danks in LF or RF. Maybe if the only option was Vizquel/Teahen or Danks as your DH, then I'd argue you have to try to see if Danks can come up and catch fire. To me, Danks equals a more gifted and potentially talented Brian Anderson, but still more of a 4th OF unless he figures out the offensive side of the game.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ May 16, 2010 -> 03:06 PM) What a s***ty day. Just got from the wake of my friend's little sister to see this. Can anything else happen to make it worse? Oh look, Tigers and Twins won. I should go in the other room to make sure my dogs are still breathing. Maybe a second viewing of HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is the only way to have pleasant feelings today.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 16, 2010 -> 03:05 PM) The White Sox "saved" money last year unloading veterans, yet when it came to acquiring more offense at a reasonable rate this offseason, they passed. The "savings" means nothing. I disagree with the notion he's got nothing to learn at AAA. You throw him to the wolves now and he fails, you may never get him back. He made some progress defensively last year. He still has a lot of things to work on, getting rid of a guy like AJ who has been as close to the heart of the team as any player and putting all the pressure on Flowers is a disaster waiting to happen. Ease him in during September or if AJ gets hurt, and see what he can do next year, but always have a back up plan. There is a back-up plan, Castro and Lucy. Not a great one, but one nonetheless. Heck, let Cole Armstrong play, it doesn't matter to me at this point in the season.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 16, 2010 -> 03:01 PM) Flowers may someday be the OPS guy you are hoping, but its certainly not now. How can you honestly know that? It's just a guess, based on his K/AB rate, yes? I mean, as someone else said, what's the worst thing that could happen, at this point?? What else is he or Danks going to learn in AAA? If they're so fragile they end up like Brian Anderson or Josh Fields, well, then so be it. Then we really have to look at our drafting philosophy and totally revamp our FO structure. Now it seems like BAD LUCK is the excuse for our performance so far this season. Anyone watching Beckham and Quentin so far this season would know both those guys are doing a lot more than just hitting in "bad luck," or Gavin Floyd pitching in bad luck, etc. It's like saying, well, Alex Ramirez has hit 20-30 "foul" home runs this year. Yeah, well, so what? They are foul because the pitcher put them in that place and he couldn't keep them fair. Last time I checked, they aren't getting credit on the back of the baseball card for "just missed it" or "hang with ems," are they??? That's just such a horrible, crappy excuse.

Maybe we can talk more about Thome (great to see him enjoying himself in MIN, I'm happy for him)....so we can rest the Swisher, Ryan Sweeney, Pods, Chris B. Young and Chris Carter/Gio Gonzalez threads??? Haha....well, I'm to blame for some of those...but I argued over and over again for keeping Thome and giving him 300-350 AB's, which is exactly what Minnesota is projecting him to do.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 16, 2010 -> 02:54 PM) Keep AJ around. Its not like the Sox have a 20 year committment to him, just the rest of the season. When Flowers starts consistently raking in AAA and if the Sox are out of it, call him up then and let him play. There really should be no panic about this 5/10 stuff. People are going to realize AJ was a lot better than they thought when he is gone. Still, we can't be paying declining veteran players $5-6-7 million dollars that are way below average defenders and below league average offensively. The future is Flowers, whether he fails or not, the only way this offense has any upside is if Flowers is an 800-900 OPS type of player to go along with the defensive and game-calling limitations he'll obviously be presenting (think Miguel Olivo without the arm).

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 16, 2010 -> 02:50 PM) You'd actually bring up Flowers and expect him to be a part time DH and backup 1b? Oh, and to platoon with our other RH hitting DH? Why am I bothering talking to you? Obviously T-Flow won't do on the job training at the major league level at 1B. Want to see Alexei Ramirez and Mark Teahen put up 30 and 40+ ERRORS? Only way Flowers (at the major league level) is playing is almost everyday, and that's with an AJ trade. You won't see AJ sharing time with Flowers. Period.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ May 16, 2010 -> 02:48 PM) I never said to bring up Viciedo or Danks. But to argue that there's any reason to hold onto Kotsay and Vizquel when you have younger guys like Flowers or Lillibridge who could do more with their ab's, is a joke. I don't even like Lillibridge, i'd give the play to Nix, but there's is nothing at this point that Kotsay and Vizquel can offer this ballclub outside of veteran status, that these kids cannot. The trade return from Howry, Baldwin, Durham, Alomar and Lofton...I think we got one "useable" asset. We did get the likes of Felix Diaz, Onan Masaoka, Berry/Barry, Emenencio Pacheco, Jon Fireball Adkins, etc. That was Frank Francisco, who we packaged later for Everett.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 16, 2010 -> 02:45 PM) Why exactly would you want to bring anyone up? Lillibridge is the only one who can play middle IF positions hitting worth a darn. You'd be crazy to bring up Viciedo right now, and even more insane to do so and put him in a part time playing role. Putting Vizquel at DH is a more intelligent move than that. CJ's not hitting at all right now. D2 isn't hitting either, FWIW. May as well let those guys hit in the minors. No harm happens to you if you hold onto the players in the big leagues, maybe you even find someone willing to trade you a Brian Anderson style washout later in the year. Or Matty Thornton. Or Alex Gordon. Or Gavin Floyd (although it would be nice when he decides to start pitching like a top-line starter again).

Rongey getting hammered about Pierre. How is it NOT KW's fault for expecting Juan Pierre at his age to be a .300 hitter in the AL, at USCF? Look at the decline in the 30's of aging speed players, try that one. Did anyone really expect Juan Pierre to hit .300 with the White Sox this year? I know 90% of us didn't. There just wasn't any reason at all, except ONE hot 4-6 week streak with the Dodgers last season. But looking at his career trajectory over 2006-07-08-09, it was insane to expect JP to be anything close to an AVERAGE MLB LFer in terms of offensive production. We just got so caught up with finding a traditional leadoff hitter we forgot what's most important, OBP, OBP, OBP!!!!

The next "stage" of this season couldn't come soon enough... Nobody's going to come out to the ballpark for walk-up sales anyway, so let's see what we've got ASAP.

Oh, I forgot the Tigers' rookie Boesch or Borsch or whatever the heck his name is... Why can't we produce more than 3 position players (Crede, Rowand and Beckham, maybe!) in a generation? Well, I guess you can count Sweeney, Chris Young and Chris Carter for other organizations.

You just have to tip your hats to that great Kansas City Royals bullpen... Great baserunning from AJ and Ramirez. Routine fly ball that fell in from Aviles in the 4th when the Sox were up 2-0 was the turning point of the ballgame. That and the Teahen/Pierre outs in the 7th with RISP against the, at best, erratic DUSTY HUGHES.

Great job, Teahen!!!! Billy Butler, by the way, was off 1B. Betancourt continuing to be the defensive player of the series for BOTH teams this weekend. Quite a talented enigma, he is. Sorry, heard the announcers saying Mark and forgot it was TMK and not TMT, both devastating offensive presences

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 16, 2010 -> 02:22 PM) Really? You must have a really low opinion of major league GM's don't you? You expect them to overreact immensely and give up a huge price for a guy who has a few weeks of real good power, then the moment he has a bad series all trade value vanishes? We were never going to get anything for Konerko without subsidizing his contract, unless he went on the type of tear he started the season with from June 15th through July 31st. Then we MIGHT have been able to get away with another team just taking the contract (like the Sox did with Rios). You can't get that type of coincidental timing...it's about as likely as timing the stock market, buying low and selling high.

QUOTE (greg775 @ May 16, 2010 -> 02:18 PM) Sending Beckham down won't help us win games. He's old enough and mature enough to be in the majors. He has to ride it out up here and show what he's got. Team is going nowhere either way. Going down will not help him or the team. Playing Omar and Nix is no better. This isn't like Robin Ventura when he was a rookie and 0 for 41. There's a ton of pressure on Beckham because of the struggles of the rest of the line-up. Everyone's acting like the only solution is to let him continue to struggle in Chicago with Walker. What's the WORST thing that could happen if he had a different voice in his ear instead of Walk? I mean, every game he's getting bombarded by the media, it's like Brian Anderson (and we were winning in 2006 when he was hitting similar to the way Beckham is right now from April-June that year).....

Well, the window when Paulie Konerko was great trade bait has quickly closed. No way you can move him anyway in mid-May, heck, we should have been 5-6 GB and right in it, now we're back where we started before the first game of the Twins' series, which is not good.

This news just in KW, the Tigers have done more than put themselves in a position to compete with you. They've not only gotten younger and cheaper (Austin Jackson, Scherzer, etc.), they've proven that a city in the worst economic decline in the country has the balls to go out and add Valverde and J. Damon while the White Sox sit on their hands and knees praying for everything possible that could go right to break that way offensively (Quentin and Ramirez returning to form, along with Jones and Rios, Teahen actually being a decent starter, Pierre not being washed up and at the end of the line, Beckham not being a fluke, AJ not having all the wear and tear of catching sneak up on him). Kudos to DD. He backed himself into a corner with the Robertson, Bonderman, Willis, Renteria, Sheffield, Ordonez, Carlos Guillen and Granderson deals...but he's back out of it quickly enough. Miguel Cabrera was like sarin gas if he tried to trade him this past offseason and get anything in return. And the Tigers have brought 2-3-4 regulars (rookies) up too, like Clete Thomas, Rayburn, Sizemore, Austin Jackson, etc. Heck, they're winning with Adam Everett and Brandon Inge playing a lot, and both those guys are pretty sucky offensively.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 16, 2010 -> 02:05 PM) Teahen is one of the worst hitters in baseball against LHP this year. With the tying run at the plate, you have to go to your bench. There's no excuse to have a game where you're facing a righty starter, and then have a situation where you have 4 lefties face a lefty reliever in the same inning. It wouldn't make sense to use Nix,Castro or Quentin there. You don't want to ruin Teahen's fragile confidence!!!! Just like using Vizquel as your DH with Teahen playing in the field....these are obvious, "no brainer" calls the kid from LITTLE BIG LEAGUE would have no trouble distinguishing right from wrong on.

Somehow Randy Williams has 17 walks and 13 strikeouts. And yet he still isn't held accountable by KW. Great!