caulfield12

The Tribune is running it right now as if it's a "LIVE/BREAKING" story, but apparently not...??? You would think the editors over there would have some clue, but it's a former Cub, so maybe it's another chance to get a shot in at the White Sox (that he apparently doesn't want to play on the South Side). You'd have to think if Wood came in, it would be as the closer. Crain definitely won't be...he'll be more like Dotel or Santos for the middle two months of 2010. FWIW, they already noted in the story he had apparently said he wasn't interested...which was going to get interesting, or words to that effect.

I guess if you're comparing Crain to Rauch or Guerrier, he's the highest risk, but also has the most upside. He was pretty bad (almost to Linebrink proportions in 08/09) though in the past, spotty/erratic is how I would describe it. I don't think any Twins fans are upset about losing any of those three, but Crain was definitely the best of the group last year. Some even thought he pitched well enough to be a closer for one of the bottom 5-10 teams in MLB coming into this offseason. Let's hope for once we get a former Twin who can make his former team regret their decision to let him go.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/ct-sp...,7999899.column

Collapse THUMBS UP, just lots of interesting things to think about GET HIM to the GREEK 3.5/4.0 The Messenger 3.5/4.0

Captain Hugh JACKman, lol....would have been strange, but I think he would have been an excellent choice as well Forgetting Sarah Marshall 3.5/4.0 Date Night 2.75/4.0 The Town 3.75/4.0 Megamind 3.25/4.0 I Love You Phillip Morris 3.5/4.0 Easy A 3.5/4.0 JACKASS 3-D 2.75/4.00 (although kind of silly to try to objectively rate any of those movies)

I think the way the Nielsen company does it is random samplings in the thousands of viewers....they also try to enroll their subscribers in programs where they monitor tv usage automatically through a centralized computer database.

If you go by average number of households for the tv broadcasts, the Cubs were 9th and the White Sox 17th.

Quentin had some seasons in the minors where he was actually rated/graded as above average. In 2008, he wasn't horrible, compared to say Josh Fields or Mark Teahen at 3B. A lot of posters here felt that he would be even more comfortable playing his natural position, RF. And he hasn't really demonstrated the arm strength he had before his injuries, but we haven't had a RF who could throw in the Top 10-15% at his position for ages. I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility that he will be significantly improved this year if his foot has healed 100%. That's a big IF, of course. One thing is for sure, if you took a poll of most in baseball, they'd say we would be much more likely to win the ALCD with Quentin getting the majority of at-bats over a Teahen/Jones platoon. And I don't this the disparity between his home and road numbers will hold up either. (Didn't the same thing happen with Beckham in his rookie year, there was about a 150-175 OPS difference between home and road?) I've watched Teahen try to play both 2B and RF when he was in Kansas City. He really is worse than Quentin's worst possible performance out there.

I'm almost certain that Teahen is "only" for two more years, definitely not three. Not to mention there are other CFer's out there that teams will be willing to dump and send money along with them....Beltran, Vernon Wells, Mike Cameron, etc. Not sure about Rasmus or either Upton, Chris Young, etc., how available they are at this point, but trading Rios would be foolhardy, and no way that KW simply gets bowled over with an offer. If for no other reason than it would look pretty silly to give up a premium prospect when any team in baseball could have had him for free. I know, I know...any team in the past could have had, say, Jayson Werth or Carlos Pena for next to nothing. But it's basically making KW look brilliant and the rest of baseball look silly. I think most GM's want to wait one more half season of productivity before making a substantive offer on Rios, as he tailed off a lot the last two months.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...id=opinionsbox1 I thought of another one....Wyclef Jean. Mark Zuckerberg, not sure if he counts as an activist or how to classify him. Buffett and Gates? Ted Turner? The point of the Washington Post article was that John Lennon directly confronted "power/government" instead of being "captured" by it....even putting himself under FBI monitoring and being threatened with having his visa revoked because of his Vietnam War stance. Bono is not the only well-intentioned celebrity wonk of our age - the impulse is ubiquitous. Angelina Jolie, for instance, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (seriously) in addition to serving as a U.N. goodwill ambassador. Ben Affleck has become an expert on the war in Congo. George Clooney has Sudan covered, while Leonardo DiCaprio hobnobs with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders at a summit to protect tigers; both actors have written opinion essays on those subjects in these pages, further solidifying their expert bona fides. But why should we pay attention to Bono's or Jolie's expertise on Africa, any more than we would ask them for guidance on the proper monetary policy for the Federal Reserve? True dissidents - celebrity or not - play a vital role in democracy. But the celebrity desire to gain political power and social approval breeds intellectual conformity, precisely the opposite of what we need to achieve real changes. Politicians, intellectuals and the public can fall prey to groupthink (We must invade Vietnam to keep the dominoes from falling!) and need dissidents to shake them out of it. True dissidents claim no expertise; they offer no 10-point plans to fix a problem. They are most effective when they simply assert that the status quo is morally wrong. Of course, they need to be noticed to have an impact, hence the historical role of dissidents.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=3008&p=.htm Looks like this might be the end of the Narnia franchise...although there will be a temptation to bring the two older kids back for one more go at it. Prince Caspian made over $425 million globally but cost $225 million or so, and that doesn't even include marketing costs, which were huge. I think the budget for this one came in around "only" $145 million but it's going to struggle to make $20-22 million this weekend. That's a really soft opening...of course, they're banking on the Christmas/New Year's holiday, but when you lose to the likes of Eragon, there are serious problems with the franchise. I think everyone is just about exhausted with 3D overcharging one year later for movie-going experiences that don't come close to matching Avatar, How to Train Your Dragon or even the latest Resident Evil. But, if they're making yet another Piranha movie, maybe they'll do another Narnia or Phillip Pullman novel. But don't count on it.

There's no question if you have to choose Andruw Jones at $3-4 million or Quentin at $5.5 or whatever he ends up with in arbitration that Carlos has 5X the upside....both are/were incredibly streaky, but I think Quentin can have a breakout year with more focus/pressure on Konerko and Dunn. I hope Beckham can get off to a hot start as well. Hopefully the offense takes off like the first half of 2006 and Morel can be this coming year's version of Brian Anderson, albeit with a 675-700 OPS instead of horrendously bad. It's pleasant to imagine a future White Sox team with Mitchell in LF, Viciedo in RF, Morel at 3B, Beckham at 2B and Flowers at C....we need to have some of those young players break through and become regular contributors like the Twins always seem to have (Valencia and Duensing last year) in order to keep the payroll at no more than $125 million.

LOCAL RATINGS http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/66312 White Sox 26th, Cubs 23rd....but this was in the middle of last season, I'd assume the White Sox average ratings picked up from July-August for sure http://www.sportsmediawatch.net/2010/10/ca...atings-red.html (i can't access this here in China) Reactions? Seems a lot of the huge market teams have low/lower ratings as well, which makes sense in terms of the fact that many in LA and Chicago aren't interested in baseball and the sports followings are less concentrated in markets like St. Louis or Minnesota.

Yes, Coco Crisp is a significant improvement over Juan Pierre. If he gets hurt... you can say that about anyone. But it doesn't take a worldbeater to replace what would have been Juan Pierre's production. You put DeAza there, or grab a Reed Johnson for little to nothing, something like that. You don't have to sell the farm to spot patch that kind of loss. The problem is that is we've seen firsthand how difficult it is to find bullpen replacements (2006-2007/2010), CFers since Rowand, a fifth starter (2001-2004), a quality lead-off hitter, a DH last year, etc. I'm not going to put Crisp in the Nick Johnson category, but there's no way I would feel confident in him staying healthy for a full season.....same with Andruw Jones. There's calcuated risk (bringing in Putz/Jones/Vizquel on value contracts), and then there's even higher risk. This whole idea of patching losses easily took a big hit last year with the whole Mark Kotsay fiasco. We said it in the offseason...up until the season started, and then again in June/July. Still, no solution.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405...IDDLETopStories Why do things like this always seem to happen around the holidays? You've got to feel a LITTLE for the guy, can you imagine living in a world where your wife petitions to have her last name/child's name changed because of something your father or mother did? I guess we have to assume he's probably guilty of something...but it's always sad when children lose a parent, they're the real victims in this (along with all those defrauded by the Ponzi Scheme in the first place).

Isn't Collapse that "conspiracy theory" movie? Isn't Inside Job better? I had a friend who insisted I see Collapse but I wasn't that interested when I watched the trailer... And everyone ripped The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo to shreds...you liked it? As far as Transformers III goes, it's a mixed bag. As a history fan, I like movies that get everyone to research things on their own and learn more about the past...otoh, there will be a significant segment of the population (especially younger, more impressionable viewers) who start to question whether we even landed on the moon or there's another government cover-up, Area 51 (Independence Day also comes to mind off the top of my head), etc. I'll admit when I was younger I got into the whole JFK thing, reading about Pearl Harbor as well...there is so much stuff out there about 9/11 now too, you just have to make sure you study both sides (like the Warren Commission Report) to get a balanced/objective view.

The players that we'll really shake our heads about getting those 5-7 year deals will be Cliff Lee (because he'll be 39), Adrian Beltre and Rafael Soriano, all of them definitely have Werth/Crawford and/or Scott Boras to thank, especially. Even the Tulowitzki deal. You start seeing those numbers all around the board and you start to realize the writing is on the wall with Jon Danks...and I'm certainly not an advocate of making him our first $100 million dollar contract. Those things (especially for pitchers) just always tend to blow up in your face. For every 1 that works out, there are 9 that don't.

Sure, Jamie Buehrle's in a better position than all (or most) of us to shell at $2400 to save a dying animal. I had a black Labrador retriever that swallowed a rock and Max was going to die because it got stuck in his stomach/intestines and he started eating grass and throwing up and luckily I caught it 2-3 days in time....I think that surgery was well over $1000 and I have never regretted it. Yes, you can "deworm" an entire province in Haiti for less, it's just hard to put any type of price tag on saving a loved family pet, dog, cat...whatever. You don't have to be hit over the head by the weepy sentimentalism of Marley & Me to understand.

It's going to take a lot more than Viciedo to get Garza. Who else do we have in the minors that would possibly that deal work? Would you trade Viciedo and Mitchell for him? And then we'd only have Garza for one or two years, right? Other than Carlos Beltran and Vernon Wells, what CFers out there with the type of atrocious contracts that want to take Juan Pierre and Mark Teahen? Even with a bad contract for both those two (or Fukudome), I'm not sure why I would want two players that will have a negligible affect on any rebuilding ballclub. If it's a team like the Mets, they're not going to want to totally demoralize their fanbase by starting Pierre AND Teahen, even if they are saving, let's say, $8-10 million, on Beltran. Why is CoCo Crisp leading off a good idea? Is he a significant upgrade over Pierre? How likely is he actually to stay healthy? If he goes down, we're looking at playing Jordan Danks or our 4th/5th outfielder, whoever that is. Trying to replace a starter during the regular season will be even more expensive....in terms of prospects surrendered or giving up all our remaining minor league prospects. Even if we tried to trade one of our starters, we're not going to get much back unless it's for Floyd/Danks/Garza...and then your strength is a weakness again because you can't count on either Outman or Peavy at this point. And you count Sale and Pena as "starters" on KW's big board of depth, but things still start looking very ugly in 2013. It's like the Twins, even without Pavano, they have Liriano/Duensing/Baker/Blackburn/Slowey and Gibson, so but you're never going to see them trade one of those last three until they're sure what they've got in Gibson at the major league level.

QUOTE (IamtheHBOMB @ Dec 9, 2010 -> 08:17 AM) I've had this saved on my Netflix queue for months, but it is still unavailable. How were you able to watch it? http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/REt9GcNiE3s/ You're going to have to get very creative with the subtitles though. I watched it today...really good, clever storyline and dialogue. Amir Khan as Rancho and Virus and the nerdy #2 student were great. I put it right up there with Moonsoon Wedding as one of my favorite Indian movies. I only wish I could have seen it in a theatre (instead of PC) and without having to read the subtitles to the side and then watch the film kind of back and forth.

Yeah, while they're going all in, they can just take Carlos Beltran or Vernon Wells for Mark Teahen and Viciedo...in PlayStation world maybe.

QUOTE (J.Reedfan8 @ Dec 11, 2010 -> 12:24 AM) I could of sworn I said "not trying to say go out and get Granderson" which means no I wasn't trying to say get that guy (or Cameron) making 10+ mil. But what stud young CFer is there out that we actually have the minor league talent to acquire? Viciedo alone won't be enough to do it. Trading Danks/Floyd makes even less sense. Someone will say Rasmus, but we don't have the pieces to go after him without creating other gaping holes in the major league roster.

Wonder if they are still looking at Soriano (Boras) or Downs is their main bullpen expenditure? They really have to bite the bullet and take Beltre and gamble he'll actually produce in a non-walk year.

And who are we going to trade to get Granderson? We can't keep acquiring a slew of these players that are making $10 million plus a season...with multi-year contracts that hamstring us in future years.

You don't trade Quentin for Dominic Brown unless your scouts are CERTAIN he can put up at least Alexei Ramirez numbers. Every year, there's 3-4 Cameron Maybins or Fernando Martinezes or Gerardo Parra's and almost none of them put up the number that an injured Quentin put up the last two years...let alone have the ability to put up 40-125. It just doesn't fit with this "all in" philosophy. Sure, we can theorize that trading for our own version of Austin Jackson would balance the line-up and save us $3-4 million, but KW better know exactly what he's doing. We don't have to trade Quentin. Of course, the Phils could take a risk too and go with Francisco/Gload/Brown, but both teams consider themselves World Series contenders....so you're going to weaken the line-up and put more pressure on Beckham, Rios, Ramirez, Teahen, etc. to produce again? I don't think that's a wise move. Try Viciedo in RF, he has the arm...he can't be worse than Josh Fields in LF. See what you have out there first...and see how healthy Quentin looks in spring training. His value is pretty low now...selling him at this point is pretty dubious. Whatever you do, you NEVER trade Quentin to open up playing time for TEAHEN because you're stuck with his contract. After spending that money on Dunn, Konerko and bringing AJ back, that would be the definition of stupidity.