caulfield12

If Soria's hurt....their whole future is riding on Greinke, Moustakas, Hosmer, Hochevar, Billy Butler, but Butler, he's not even close to a superstar, he's more like DeJesus....solid, above average MLB player, but not much above that mean, especially when you consider the numbers put up at 1B/DH/LF.

http://www.kansascity.com/2010/05/11/19402...on-getting.html Not exactly the same result that we got out of Josh Fields. Wonder if they'll go the same direction with Dayan Viciedo (LF/RF) at some point...I just don't know about Dayan's height and being RHed at 1B, it seems he's better suited for a corner OF spot, his mobility is limited but he has a cannon for an arm.

Just catching up with game now.... What the heck's going on with Beckham? No change at all in his approach? This is not boding well for his season....well, hopefully he'll snap out of it somehow, he's simply too good not to.

QUOTE (southsidetony @ May 11, 2010 -> 05:57 PM) Upon questioning you on Katy Perry... BleedingDDawg: (6:41:40 PM) even if I knew who she was, I still wouldn't think she's hot Wow, prag. I'm not big on celeb gossip, magazines, TMZ, etc... but I do know who Katy Perry is. You are THAT out of touch with modern culture. And even if you know who she was you wouldn't think she's hot? Why? Because she's not black, or "big?: I reject your notion that skinny white blondes always win these things. Halle Berry won Maxim's #1 ranks at least once, Jennifer Lopez I think twice, Alba, Fox, Longoria, Johannson(sp?), have all won it once I believe. The only one of whom being a white blonde (ScarJo), is not rail thin by a long sight. I give you that Rihanna is quite... overrated; and that Rosario Dawson and Kerry Washington are imo, more attractive. I know you love black women, but most of those whom you listed on that list are not going to come close on most people's list... some of them I have never heard of. My top 10: 1) Emmanuelle Chriqui 2) Olivia Wilde 3) Kristin Bell 4) Linda Cardelini(sp) 5) Maria Menounous (sp?) 6) Olivia Munn 7) Natalie Portman 8) Sofia Vergara 9) Catherine Bell 10) Diane Lane I'm sure you know about 3 names from the list and find all but one disgusting. The fact that no one on this thread agrees with your assertions should be some indication of how far you have strayed from the pack. (Note: I will be as abrasive with Donald as I want as he has been my broseph since '01... regardless of how wrong he may be.) I met Sofia Vergara when I was in Baranquilla, Colombia, also home of the Renteria brothers. I can't remember the girl's name, but there is a porn star from Colombia who looks almost exactamente like her. Catherine Bell today, or 10-12 years ago? Linda Cardellini from ER?

Rumor is the Royals are seriously considering giving Kila another shot at 1B/DH. Depends (partially) on what happens with Guillen, if they can trade him. Butler really should never play in the field, he's worse than Teahen.

QUOTE (iamshack @ May 11, 2010 -> 03:48 PM) I don't think it's incredibly likely that this team wins much of anything, unless the Twins come well back to earth. That being said, I do know that this roster is better than what they've shown and that several of these players are better than what they've shown. Does that mean they will go 77-53 to win 90 games? Most likely not. But from what I've seen thus far, can I say with any more certainty than I could on day 1 whether they would win 90 games? Not really, to be honest. Am I even worried about what the Twins are doing on a daily basis at this point? Absolutely not. I know that we need to start winning series, string a few 3 and 4 game streaks together, and avoid losing streaks ourselves. If we can do those things, I'll look up again at the All-Star break and take stock of what needs to be done then. You sound too pragmatic and measured, like Barack Obama (lol...I voted for him, by the way...made me think immediately of him, the way you wrote it, I would expect EXACTLY that to come from a press release if he was GM of the White Sox instead of KW, who's definitely more likely to blow a gasket or overturn the post-game spread than Barry).

QUOTE (Jenks Heat @ May 11, 2010 -> 01:30 PM) I would do the hottest 100,000 women in America in a heartbeat and I must tell you I get my fair share of the honies. Are you Wilt Chamberlain or Gene Simmons? Warren Beatty? LOL. I'll nominate my "ex" wife (well, we've been separated for 4 1/2 years), I always joked she was the Russian Jessica Alba. BTW, don't bother to e-mail her, she already has a fiance, lol. www.irina.s5.com If you want to see the hottest girl I've ever been with, just google "Davon Kim," she's one of my best friends, originally from Cebu City in the Philippines, she's most definitely not Korean. And no, you can't have her e-mail, lol....she's married and living at an undisclosed location in Europe. If you saw all the pictures from the Philippines, Thailand, China....you would wonder why I ever posted here or listened to White Sox games at all. The funniest, though, was when I met Dennis Rodman's dad hanging out in the Philippines. His name is Philander (literally) Rodman and he has at least 19 different kids in the world, although he said the real numbers are in the 30's or 40's range when I asked him if it was true. Crazy guy. I could understand, when he was famous, chicks like Madonna being after his son, but there's nothing really compelling about his father that would cause every woman to want to sleep with him. For the record, I'll trade all those girls for the one in Rock Raines' avatar, but he's never divulged that information. She's like Kristin Kreuk merged with Racheal Leigh Cooke WITH A SOX HAT, lol. But I really have to get one of the KTV girls here in China (the ones with five inch platform heels, those black stockings that should have a garter that the girls wear up to mid thigh, mini-skirt, XXXS blouse) to pose with my White Sox cap on so I can change my avatar. But I love El Gran Titan de Bronze too much!!!

I have the same feeling when I see Eva Green...can't figure her out.

Trading Jenks right now would have been like trading in your whole portfolio when the market was cratering for one or two days over freaking Greece debt issues. Simply illogical to sell as low as possible on him and panic. There's zero reason to force our hand to do so. Embree replacing Williams or backing up as LHR/loogy and pushing Thornton to closer is definitely NOT that reason to move Jenks, that much is for certain.

Then you have the Gomes/Coelho/Silverio (or is it Coehlo and I'm confusing him with the author) disasters (w/ Wilder), the complete debacle in the Dominican (Jesus Pena anyone?) How the f--- can we have Ozzie Guillen and Omar Vizquel in our organization and the only result we have to show for that is Cleveland Santeliz??? Takatsu and Iguchi? I think we acquired a Korean from the Red Sox, Onan Masaoka, and then Pu Yin whatever from Taiwan or Korea that we gave a pretty significant sum of signing bonus money to and he never came close to denting BIRM or CHARLOTTE, think he went down with injuries and never got his stuff over 90 MPH if I remember correctly.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ May 11, 2010 -> 03:56 PM) The Sox will be in serious trouble if the team collapses. You guys should know that. We haven't dedicated enough money to the farm system and don't have a lot of tradeable assets to the contracts in place and the fact that most of our tradeable assets are guys we don't want to trade (Floyd/Danks) as they would be key building blocks. So Peavy/Konerko/Buehrle are all key guys that we could move, but wouldn't get a lot for due to there contracts. Paulie might be the exception on this because he's putting up massive numbers and only has this year remaining on his deal. But his pending FA will reduce his value a bit. Danks/Floyd/Quentin/Beckham/Ramirez are all guys that are potential building blocks that we probably wouldn't move because we'd have to trade for prospects and push everything back a few years. Quentin/Ramirez might be guys we'd look into trading, but there production hasn't been as good recently and because of that I don't know how beneficial a trade would be. Andruw Jones would be a good piece to sell come July if we aren't in it and he is still hitting. His contract is a steal and plenty of teams could use a player like him at his price. Jenks - most likely to get non-tendered Thornton - s***loads of value with 1 year remaining. If we were going to go into a rebuilding mode, we'd probably have to move him cause there is little value holding him due to the fact we would be a few years away. But the thing that is the most scary, is that if we were to go through a complete rebuilding due to salary restrictions, we just don't have the prospects at hand to even be close to being competitive. It would take years to get to that point, imo, since we don't have the trade chips necessary to help restock the system. We'd basically be completely reliant on the draft in the upcoming years to rebuild the system (outside of Viciedo, Flowers, Huddy, Morel and a few other guys). That is where Kenny's lack of setting aside enough resources towards our minor league player development and acquisitions has really killed the squad. I don't things are quite so bleak. Let's go back to the end of 2007. Our minor league system was even looking more brutal, agreed? The only glimmer of hope was Owens/Fields/Wasserman and the fact that we hadn't dealt Buehrle/Dye, etc. With the additions of Floyd/Danks/Ramirez/Quentin to that ballclub, we went from 72 to 89 wins, a 17 game differential. There's absolutely no reason that can't happen again. 2005, coming off that mysterious 2004 offseason, we caught lightning in a bottle and never looked back. Yes, 100%, KW'd need to make the "RIGHT" moves in the prospects acquired department....if it was 2002 all over again with our returns (the only decent one we got back was Frank Francisco), then I'd tend to agree with you. Things would look a lot different to me if Mitchell was raking now at Winston-Salem or even BIRM, and looking 1 1/2 years away instead of 2 1/2 to 3 years out.... Yes, I do agree trading out of that most valuable core (Thornton, Danks, Peavy, Floyd, Rios) is riverboat gambling at its best and Jonestown suicidal at its worst, but I have zero belief that KW won't do at least SOMETHING and sit back on his hands while Rome is burning. Numerous times, they both said they won't tolerate and sit idly through another 2007, yes? We do need a lot of things to break right with Flowers, Morel, Viciedo, Danks II, Shelby (possibly), Santeliz, CJ Retherford...but I don't think we can say we're any worse off now than in 2007, with the possible exception of the Twins looking like a "dynasty" and spending more money than us on payroll. OTOH, look how good the Tigers and Indians (and White Sox in 05/06 and 08) have looked at different points and how each team "collapsed" and fell back to earth, only to be resurrected like a phoenix out of the ashes. It's always possible in this division, it's just that the margin of error is razor thin with Mauer signed until forever (then again, he goes down due to injury and their franchise is seriously imperiled, with 20% of payroll soaked up by ONE player, that almost never works, see A-Rod) and the Twins being finally able to compete on a level playing field with us and DET.

Including the last two games that were blown in the series against TOR, we've blown and gone on to lose 7 "late" leads ALREADY at this early point in the season. (Some of the Twins' teams, like 2006, might have done this 2-3-4 times all season long, something like that...) Can that trend continue without Jenks as the closer? Probably not, the numbers will even out. LET'S just argue that they had held onto 4 out of 7 of those leads, not entirely unreasonable, agreed? They'd be 17-15 or maybe 16-16 and right in the thick of it heading into Minnesota. "Close" games we've lost out of 19 (not to mention many games were leading early and were passed....we haven't been BLOWN out more than 5-6 times all season where the game was "hopeless") APR 7th 3-3 tie in 7th against CLE, LOSS APR 8th 3-2 lead into the 8th against CLE, LOSS APR 9th 3-2 lead into the 7th against MINN, LOSS APR 10th 1-0 lead into the 8th before Garcia walks Thome, Kubel goes yard MINN, LOSS THESE FOUR GAMES, to me, were the turning point in this season's momentum being stalled/killed from the get-go. APRIL 16th trailing 3-2 in the 6th against CLE, LOSS APRIL 17th, 2-1 lead into the 8th, CLE, LOSS APRIL 23rd, 3-2 deficit into the 6th, TEX, LOSS (think it was against CJ Wilson) APRIL 30th, 4-4 tie into the 7th against NYY (Thornton gave up those runs, yes?) LOSS MAY 4th, 2-1 deficit into 7th against KC, I think Teahen error here opens the floodgates, LOSS May 7th, 3-2 lead in the 8th against TOR, LOSS plus 2/4 games the last series against TOR, BLOWN SAVES That's 12 out of the 19 losses that were either blown and lost late or one run deficits/tie games that got away from the Sox. In fact, I'd guess out of those "OTHER" 7 losses, 3-4 of them were games we had early leads in and the starting pitched just cratered (Peavy/Floyd). Turn around those 7 blown leads late into a 4-3 record or 3-4 record, we're not having this conversation at all. Of course, someone will say (and rightly so) that baseball "evens" out, that we've had 3-4-5 "comeback" wins (Mariners' series, Teahen in TOR) that we absolutely didn't deserve...so the naysayers will argue we're exactly where we deserve to be. Certainly, Pythagoras would agree we're a below average, so-so team, just not as terrible as things would appear on the surface.

QUOTE (jphat007 @ May 11, 2010 -> 01:42 PM) 8 games out in mid May is pretty close to out of the race already. Not very many teams come back from deficits like that. A very very small number of exceptions have, but that number is super small. The 2001 team started 14-29 and got all the way back to 8 games over .500. 1983, 16-24 to winning the division by almost 30 games and 100 victories. It's never, ever good for the White Sox to lose, because it crushes our attendance and depresses our payroll going forward historically.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 11, 2010 -> 11:59 AM) From someone that I trust, Jenks is not throwing the curve anymore because of the stress it puts on his elbow. He doesn't want to get injured prior to his free agency contract. Sadly, he's losing money by the day not being able to throw his best pitch. Reminiscent of Crede shutting it down because of his recurring back problems in late 2008, this situation also really got onto Ozzie's nerves (perhaps the only time he was ever frustrated with Joe) and it ended up with the band-aid of Juan Pierre at 3B, which might have saved the season. Maybe something good will come out of Jenks falling apart so early, just like Takatsu in 2005 (not saying we have a WS run in us, far from it).

QUOTE (whitesoxfan101 @ May 11, 2010 -> 02:12 PM) Well when you consider the question what is it good for (absolutely nothing), I can't take such a fact seriously. He's still having a great season so far though. Okay, Jackie Chan!

2011 Contract Issues: Chicago White Sox (mlbtraderumors.com) By Tim Dierkes [May 11 at 8:17am CST] The White Sox face two contractual options after the season: Reliever Matt Thornton has a $3MM club option with a $250K buyout. This is a good bet to be exercised. Backup catcher Ramon Castro has a $1.2MM club option with a $200K buyout. He's missed most of the season with a heel injury. The team's other free agents are earning $26.125MM this year, led by Paul Konerko and A.J. Pierzynski. If they also let Castro go and we add in buyouts paid to Jermaine Dye and Mike MacDougal, the Sox have nearly $29MM coming off the books. Increases to players under contract total $11.3MM, with Alex Rios, Juan Pierre, Mark Teahen, and Gavin Floyd getting bumps of at least $2MM. There are also arbitration cases to consider: Alexei Ramirez goes for the first time, John Danks, Carlos Quentin, and Tony Pena a second, and Bobby Jenks a third. Technically Ramirez is already under contract for '11, but perhaps he's allowed to choose arbitration if he prefers. I think Jenks will be non-tendered, meaning another $7.5MM off the books. Using the above scenarios I think the White Sox would have approximately $15MM to work with if they hold payroll steady. Keep in mind that's before re-signing any free agents, including 2010 offensive standouts Konerko and Andruw Jones. My first thought....I think that you have to start out with the assumption that $10-15 million would have to be chopped off right away from payroll due to decreased payroll and revenue generation. So let's say we brought back Konerko for 2011, that would be it in terms of the moves we could make, unless we slashed even more deeply: Linebrink Teahen Pierre Peavy Buehrle Rios Danks Quentin, Beckham and Ramirez aren't going anywhere. And we might have to DH Flowers/Viciedo, that could be scary! Some might wish for a return to DH at-bats for TMK, Vizquel and Juan Pierre in that scenario....well, at least it'll be more entertaining, right? Kotsay, Vizquel and probably Castro would come off the books as well, unless KW (maybe I missed it) already signed those guys to multi-year extensions in the middle of the night like he did with Teahen.

I can't take two whole days without a game. It's like the ASB almost. Whatever happens, happens, at this point.

QUOTE (kitekrazy @ May 11, 2010 -> 10:21 AM) I don't like the idea of trading for prospects because that's what they are. I don't trust the Sox farm system either to further develop those prospects. The problem is losing teams always makes those trades. Those trades are made out of weakness. What do you propose? Holding on to players like Jenks, Crede, Dotel, Linebrink, Thome and Dye one or two seasons too long, you have ZERO to show for it in the end....(yes, Thome would have been impossible to deal without sending cash the other direction). Orlando Cabrera will end up netting us more than those four combined, ironically. We are in a position of major weakness both at the major and minor league levels. We have one strength.....Buehrle, Floyd, Danks and Peavy, as well as our individual collection of bullpen arms, their potential, moreso than their actual results when it's crunch time.

Balta, do you see any possible way out of this situation that's NOT going to cost us 20-30-40% of our season ticket base, not to mention decreased advertising revenues, tv and radio ratings, etc.? What is it? I think we just have to bite the bullet and hope we can make it back into contention in (hopefully) 2012 or at least 2013.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 11, 2010 -> 09:54 AM) No. Read what I said: So, we bring up our top spects Next year: D2, Viciedo, and Flowers. Pierre Goes to the bench. Rios and Peavy aren't dealt. Linebrink still here. In that case, we're still starting at $72 million committed with $3 million coming in from the Dodgers, before arbitration hearings for D1, Quentin, and TPain. D1 is probably a legitimate nearly $10 million arbitration case. Quentin...The 2008 version of Quentin only knows what he'll get, but that's a couple million for both of them, maybe even pushing >$5 million if he gets hot towards the end of the year. So we're starting off the offseason with a lineup including 3 rookies, Teahen at 3b, Beckham and Ramirez and Quentin still as potential gaping holes, with no DH, 4 starters (bring up Hudson for the 5th slot presumably), we've lost 2 of our RH arms in the bullpen and need to replace those (Jenks and Putz), and we don't have an obvious experienced closer, so either we're trying out a kid (Santos L. Halper) in that spot WHO IS THAT? Santos, Sergio? Santos Rodriguez? LEFTY? or we're going for one on the FA market. And Randy Williams is still our 2nd lefty. In other words, we're over $80 million on commitments, probably closer to $85 or even $90 once you count guys who are in at the minimum, and we're starting 3 rookies and 3 young-ish players all of whom are struggling this year. Mark Teahen is basically the guy in your lineup you have the most confidence in. Then you go out and spend $10 million on a legitimate DH, a couple million on bench guys, and a RH reliever, and that's all the room you have to maneuver. Teahen I'd have ZERO confidence in starting for a team hoping to win the division or go deep into the playoffs. KW having him sign that extension b4 he proved anything with us was close to idiotic. I think you're right about Rios, you can also include Webster (Anthony) and Jeremy Reed in the list of potential "internal" CF candidates since Rowand. We've had so many, like Owens, Wise, Lillibridge, Anderson (last year) that were complete busts or disappointments. If we really want to lower payroll, we're going to have to gut Peavy/Buehrle/Konerko/AJ/Jenks and hold onto Danks and Floyd, hoping Hudson can become at least a 3 and maybe a 2, but most likely 3-4, like the Twins seem to have a ton of (Blackburn/Slowey/Perkins/Pavano). The question becomes who is easiest to trade? Which player do we want to keep the most (Rios, Buehrle, Peavy)....and which one gives us the biggest payoff in terms of minor league prospects from High A ball on up....(see the Indians' nearly complete decimation of all their talent the last 2 seasons, with the exceptions of Hafner/Sizemore/Peralta). Then, if you can't get Danksie to agree to that long-term extension that blows Floyd's deal out of the water (more like Lester's with BOSOX), then you have to look into what you can get for him. Those four players (Rios, Peavy, Buehrle, Danks) are the single biggest decisions KW has left to deal with....everything else seems pretty obvious at this juncture. We can also trade Garcia, Castro (or keep him as a starter next year with Flowers/Viciedo at 1B/DH, Flowers rotating with Castro at catcher), Linebrink, Putz, Andruw Jones, Vizquel, Kotsay (close to ZERO return for the last two, but they deserve chances to go out with playoff teams, if we can swing a deal and a contending team would be willing to give them the last spot on the bench).

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 11, 2010 -> 08:25 AM) If we're going to go into selling mode this season, yes, I think you trade Alex Rios. He's moved back to very high value this year to a team missing a CF bat who can play defense (Boston? SF?), he's terrifically expensive the next few years for a team with our salary level, and there's every reason to think that we're going to see a salary cut in the near future after this implosion of a season. Peavy I'd consider moving...but first of all, he has a no-trade clause that makes things difficult (See: last year), and second, between his injuries and his slow start to this season, unless he's in the middle of a 60 inning scoreless streak in July, I don't think you'd get anywhere near full value from him. And you actually trust KW to go out and find another CFer? That's been a hole in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009...a huge one.

http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/busi...ourbyhour/MSP:9 Looks like the weather will clear in the late afternoon/early evening....will feel like 40 degrees or so at game time.

I've been involved in enough fire Walker threads through the years. Firing him in-season won't do anything, and it makes little to no sense. It's the kind of move you wait until the end of the year. Yes, you can argue it's better for the new coach to get a head start on working with the hitters, but the problem is that the hitting coach we probably'd want is already under contract with another team. Having an interim organizational hitting coach like Chris Chambliss come in....well, it's a change, but just a change for changing's sake. It's just like putting red, white and blue bunting on the Titanic, the ship still sinks in the end, no matter how you try to dress it up. It also depends on how you view the struggles of Quentin (injury-related, psychological/intensity/stress), Ramirez and Beckham. Nobody could argue that he hasn't done a wonderful job getting Alex Rios and Andruw Jones turned around. Konerko's having a career year. As Dick Allen will point out, the runs scored is less of an issue than runs allowed by the supposedly #1-3 rotation in the AL coming into the season, yes? Did you really expect Juan Pierre, Mark Kotsay, Omar Vizquel and Mark Teahen to be good? Can anyone be surprised if AJ Pierzynski is declining with all the intense, pressure-filled games he's played in his career at catcher?

Do we really want to trade Alex Rios? Isn't he a cornerstone CFer we could build around? Where else are we going to get a player like him? Jordan Danks? Maybe if we're REALLY REALLY lucky, Mitchell or Trayce Thompson become that type of impact player in the outfield, but would anyone bet on it happening? Mitchell will also take at least 2 seasons to arrive now, from all likelihood, if not 2 1/2. Plus, we haven't had a solid everyday CFer since Aaron Rowand, and I wouldn't exactly consider him an All-Star. It took 2-3 seasons to prove to KW and then Guillen that he was actually an everyday player. They were about to give up on him, in fact, after he had that serious motorcycle accident in the offseason. It almost makes more sense to trade Peavy than Rios if we're going into a 2-3 year rebuild, because Rios won't do anything but give us salary relief. We won't get as much in return. With Peavy, we can clear salary and get 2-3 serious prospects to build the franchise back up. Plus, those huge contracts for pitchers are much bigger risks than they are for position players IMO.

QUOTE (SouthsideDon48 @ May 11, 2010 -> 01:15 AM) Katy Perry??? Who the hell is that? And she's not even good looking. In fact, I don't find that many women on the top 100 that attractive. It seems like the people at Maxim usually go for the skinny white blondes. That's boring to me. In that list, Zoe Saldana should've been #1, the two ranked #1 and 2 wouldn't even make my Top 100 list. Also, Rihanna? She's weird looking, I can think of tons of hot black women that are a lot more attractive than Rihanna and who should've been included in the top 100 list instead of all those blondes: Kellee Stewart, Traci Bingham, Esther Baxter, Tiffany "New York" Pollard, Tichina Arnold, Rosario Dawson, Beyonce, Alicia Keyes, Lil Kim, Jennifer Hudson, Serena Williams, Kerry Washington, and Ashanti. How is it possible that none of these beautiful women made it on the Maxim list????? Also, Halle Berry aint in it either, but I never found her attractive, anyway. Also, how is it possible that these women didn't make the list??? Eva Longoria, Carmen Electra, Pamela Anderson, Trish Stratus, Demi Moore, Anna Kornikova, Jennifer Garner, Jennifer Lopez, Evangeline Lilly, etc???????? This list is a joke! I actually think I would find more women attractive in a Top 100 list from King magazine, or even if they made a Top 100 Hottest Women list in the Black Man magazine. It's funny how even though I'm white, my taste in women is drastically different from what they're trying to force-feed us as western ideals of beauty in Maxim, and that my taste in women is more in line with magazines geared towards black men. Is American society that messed up where guys think just because a woman is white, is anorexic-thin, and has blonde hair, they're hot? Naturi Naughton? I'm going to have to question Serena Williams and Jennifer Hudson, lol. Lil' Kim? REALLY? I can see someone like Traci Bingham, if you like the Playboy/Baywatch bikini bods. Rosario Dawson doesn't have a beautiful face, but she's "cute" and has the body, well, I know it's plastic surgery enhanced. What about Mike Tyson's ex, Robin Givens? You're not talking about that girl from Flavour of Love, are you? Oman? Naomi Campbell would have to be on my list, of course she's a b****, but for pure beauty. 10 years ago....same with Tyra Banks when she wasn't completely crazy.