caulfield12

Ramirez has quietly emerged as an All-Star shortstop and a "plus" offensively, especially for a middle infielder. We still have some dilemmas with Viciedo getting inconsistent playing time and a decision to make about giving at-bats to Beckham...as long as we're so close, you have to think they'll stick with Beckham, but the Minnesota plays the Indians, Orioles and Royals after taking on the Sox to begin the 2nd half, so any big decision might really go down to the July 31st deadline. Kotsay has actually been a pretty productive player over the last 20-25 games as well. Still, you'd like to see one superior bat who can take the role of Jones/Kotsay and lower the playing time of Mark because he'll probably wear down in July/August/September. Same with Vizquel. Anytime we can go 3-3 on the road (although you expect 2/3 in KC, not Arlington), it's a "victory" especially when you can play a very hot Rangers team to standstill on their own field. Right now, they've got two TOP 10 MVP candidates in Hamilton and Guerrero.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Jul 3, 2010 -> 11:00 PM) Gallardo/Danks would immediately become the third best 1-2 combo in the NL behind Lincecum/Cain and Carpenter/Wainwright. It all depends on how willing they are to fill in the DH spot and how Flowers and Viciedo hit (along with Beckham putting up a 750-850 OPS and Quentin at 850-950, those are givens, in terms of us having to get that production to be competitive). In some ways, it's more logical to go for it all THIS YEAR rather than hoping on our prospects actually coming through and performing well at the big league level for the Sox. OTOH, it's obvious especially with Jones something like 3 for 40-something and less and less likely to get the steady at-bats he'd need to dig himself out of this slump...that we don't have the resources or minor league talent to get two bats unless we pretty much want to go for broke and deal at least 2 of our top 3 prospects (not counting Mitchell/Sale). I really think that the DBacks would at least ask for Flowers for LaRoche, and they don't need him with Montero, so that leaves them asking for Hudson or Viciedo in all likelihood, although they already acquired Brandon Allen and Chris Carter...not sure they'd take another 1B prospect from us.

Of all those names listed, the only logical one (for the White Sox) is taking a huge roll of the dice on Upton's character and the coaching staff being able to control him. It's not like Maddon is a difficult manager to play for, he's one of the best, better than Scioscia in my opinion because he doesn't micromanage and try to control every aspect of the organization, he spreads the credit around. Rios, his major major major flaw defensively is on balls hit over his head....balls he has to turn his shoulder and just run to a blind spot and "find" the ball again...other than that, he's pretty close to flawless out there. It has happened to him at least 5-7 times this season already. Not errors, but plays that should be made IMO. Sweeney just doesn't have the dominant range and speed/quickness for center, certainly he's a very good RFer though, same with Markakis.

Next year or in 2012? He's already said he won't be playing for any team besides the White Sox unless it's a "very, very special" situation. He also stated that he won't manage or coach in the minors, that he wants to join the coaching staff of an MLB team. (Maybe harder to do in light of the AJ Hinch fiasco). What do you think about him on our staff? Do you think Guillen would feel threatened? I can tell you this, I think he would be more respected than Joey Cora as the manager...and be able to help with some selected free agents as well. He has all the people skills in the world, the intelligence (baseball IQ), etc.

At least Alexei is leading the league in total chances. Not too much talk about moving him to 2B or trading him these days....or moving Beckham to SS.

Well, one way to look at it would be this.... We're currently 4-5 against KC and 4-8 against CLE, for a total of 8-13. If you swung us around to where we SHOULD be against those two teams (13-8 or 14-7), we'd be 13-15 games over .500 and in first place. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

The Indians traded Lee to the then-reigning World Series champion Phillies for Jason Donald, Lou Marson, Carlos Carrasco and Jason Knapp. Donald has done a creditable job as a utility infielder, hitting .254, with promise. Catcher Lou Marson has been a disappointment, hitting .191; he is better than that, but now Carlos Santana is in town, and Santana is a franchise player. Carrasco is 6-3 in Columbus but has yet to prove he can pitch in the Major Leagues, while Jason Knapp is working to get healthy and is 2-7 in low A ball. That, from a big market team with a fabulous fan base that thought it could win it all again. Then when the Phillies traded away top prospects for Roy Halladay and were told that it would take CC Sabathia money to extend Lee, they moved him to Seattle for Phillippe Aumont, J.C. Ramirez and Tyson Gillies. Aumont was demoted to A ball and has a 7.01 ERA, Ramirez is at Double-A and has a 4.31 ERA on the year, while Gillies is hitting .238 in Double-A. Jack Zduriencik is very smart, putting Lee's name out there early to see if he can get a bidding war going. Neither the Indians nor Phillies got what today you'd say is a pair of first-round picks, so if he doesn't get what he wants, he can hold Lee and get two picks of his choice in next year's Draft. In the meanwhile, he can see what he can get. "I'm listening," says Zduriencik. "But it has to be the right kind of deal." Which means two or three cornerstone players, which is what Mark Shapiro got from Montreal by moving Bartolo Colon early in return for Lee, Sizemore and Phillips, and what then-Mariners GM Woody Woodward got at the deadline in 1998 when he moved Randy Johnson to Houston for Carlos Guillen, Freddie Garcia and John Halama. from the Gammons article at mlb.com

QUOTE (bucket-of-suck @ Jun 30, 2010 -> 02:11 PM) So he talked to Rick Hahn. Whatever. The deal is not gonna happen anyway now that's it's public and the Sox have lost leverage. Just deal Torres for LaRoche and let's be done with it. Laroche has a A TON of RBIs this month. He's exactly what we need to end the Kotsay era forever. It's going to take more than Torres, Lillibridge, CJ Retherford or John Shelby III. They're going to ask for Danks, another pitcher not named Hudson and maybe a low minors arm at least.

Yes, but, as mentioned, maybe the White Sox felt it would be good for Viciedo to have some experience of being up with the big league club...now, for him to play so sporadically for the next month, that would be more unacceptable, but it's fine for just 2-3 weeks. They can always stick him in the AFL or Winter Ball if they want or another Camp Cora. If Viciedo had hit 2-3 homers in his first couple of weeks and was still sitting on the bench waiting for lefties in the other team's rotations, then it would be a stronger argument. You can't really compare Colvin and Viciedo, because the Cubs are almost 90% out of it for this season because of the Zambrano situation and the fact they might be trading Lee or Ramirez.

Maybe it was one of Guillen's kids feeding him bad information... What did they say about KW's restaurant? Apparently, one of the Guillen kids ripped that place to shreds, too.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jun 30, 2010 -> 09:59 AM) Seriously, the Nats are asking the moon for Dunn, and the Sox don't have the pieces to acquire him. The best thing you can do at this point is to make a smaller addition or two and to tell the Nats to pound sand. The Gammons article today on Lee (mlb.com) mentioned specifically about the haul(s) the Indians got for Lee and the Blue Jays for Halladay...that almost none of those guys has made an impact worth mentioning for those two respective clubs. That most teams are fearful of giving up really high quality young prospects, even for two of the best pitchers in the game today. To think that the Nationals can get the same for Dunn, no way!

I blame it all on the LaRocheFactor. Well, in all honesty, that 2005 team, they simply HAD to cool off a bit, it happened the same way with the 2000 team as well when injuries started to take their toll. Another reason would be playing most or all of the interleague games in the first half. 2006, same thing, the injuries and wear-and-tear on the pitching staff started to show in the second half of the season. Not to mention the White Sox have had older, more veteran teams that were susceptible to wearing down in the Chicago summers. Finally, Manuel didn't do such a great job in 2003, they still faded down the stretch when it really counted and the Twins blew past them.

I don't think we'll ever sign a $100 million player, let alone $250.

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Jun 30, 2010 -> 07:06 AM) Let me throw a question out there for discussion. Do you think one of the considerations about who the Sox go after is the possibility of signing said player after this year? The three names that keep coming up are Dunn, LaRoche, and Fielder. All three are in their final year of their contract (although LaRoche has a mutual option). Is there any chance the Sox try to sign any of them, and if so who's most likely to actually sign? Fielder would be the most expensive, and I don't see that happening. Dunn and LaRoche may be about equal considering they are the same age. Thinking that Sox would want to sign one of them, if they were to try to keep Konerko as well, how much do you think the Sox would be willing to spend between the two? No more than $20 million? $18 million? I would guess Konerko at 2 years for $12-14 million...which would be a lot more affordable without Jenks, Pierre, Linebrink and Teahen. Dunn, while he still has limited value because of his defensive shortcomings, maybe he can get $18-24 million for 3 years. LaRoche, I would go 2 years, $9-11 million maybe.

Or Mitchell too...although you'd have to think KW would have realized from the last 3-4 seasons how difficult it is to acquire the "ideal" leadoff man, especially when you don't produce him in your own system. Obviously, there's no choice but to hold on to him...taking one of the 3 best bargaining chips off the table. Morel can't yet be perceived by many organizations (only NL teams) as a legit candidate to start at 3B for them.

And if you add O. Hudson/Thome to our lineup (taking them away from the Twins, of course) and also subtract Pierre/Teahen, it's pretty clear we would be much closer to first if not leading the division. Not to mention a lot more payroll flexibility going forward to boot.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jun 29, 2010 -> 03:20 PM) Yeah that killed us. I was all for going another route but they had no alternative plan in place. I wonder how realistically KW thought acquiring Damon would be when they officially cut ties with Thome? If he assumed that getting Damon with the numbers that were bandied about was going to happen, that was a pretty big miscalculation on his part. KW has come up short enough times with situations like Torii Hunter, Fukudome, trading for Miguel Cabrera....he had to have the sense that the Tigers or another team would probably outspend him in the end. Sure, the White Sox had the starting rotation, but it's not like Damon and Boras couldn't have just as easily reached the conclusion that Detroit would be equally as competitive, which they have been. Nobody expected Boesch to come out of nowhere though...or Austin Jackson to play as well as he has, although he's fading offensively. Seems like every year they can produce a rookie like Raburn or Clete Thome who puts up an 800+ OPS, and now this year again, Boesch. We had four months of Beckham, which has been the biggest rookie contribution along with Josh Fields in 2007. Yikes.

Another trade that was speculated about and then reported prematurely was the Hal McCoy one about Dye for Homer Bailey. The Garland/Erstad one as well, when it became obvious that the Disney/Cap Cities group felt that Erstad was one of their core marketing omponents and didn't want to part with him. Or Garland to the Astros for Taveras and 2-3 pitchers that have never amounted to much For former prospects team: Brandon Allen or Chris Carter 1B/DH Getz 2B Andy Gonzalez SS (just kidding) Fields 3B Ryan Sweeney, Chris Young, Aaron Rowand, Br. Anderson OF John Ely, Gio Gonzalez, Frank Francisco, Matt Guerrier, Jon Rauch, Charlie Haeger, Clayton Richard, Aaron Poreda, Russell Actually, in terms of major leaguers produced from the Sox system, we rank somewhere around 15-20 in baseball, but in terms of true "impact players" or All-Stars, probably somewhere in the 23-27 range I would guess over the last decade compared to other organizations. Of course things look a LOT different if you just included players who at ONE POINT played for the White Sox.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jun 28, 2010 -> 07:53 PM) Through May 30th, Chris Coghlan put up a .217/.268/.272/.540 line. He was at .275/.338/.400/.738 before tonight's game, and that improved due to a 2-3, 1 HR, 1 BB night. That means he's hit .380/.456/.630/1.086 since that point in time. My query, quite calmly is, why, in the blue f***, can't Beckham do that same f***ing s***? Because he's more lost than Alex Rios last year and Walker and the coaching staff simply don't seem to have any answers to help him.

Twins now down only 5-3. I have a feeling our lack of offense is going to really hurt us in the next week. Guess now that we're "close" KW will feel he doesn't have to make a move quickly....and if our getting back into it against NL competition turns out to be an aberration, you shouldn't gut the farm system. There's a good chance we'll be 7-12 combined against CLE and KC after tonight. That's just not acceptable if you want to win the ALCD.

QUOTE (southsideirish71 @ Jun 28, 2010 -> 07:41 PM) How exactly does one explain only 3 hits against this hot garbage that is pitching against us. It makes no sense. Bad advanced scouting, or simply not enough of our budget allocated in that area. Cora called that pitch-out. Probably saved a run there for us.

QUOTE (Kalapse @ Jun 28, 2010 -> 07:25 PM) It wasn't a blatantly blown call. These things do happen, I'd prefer if we didn't afford the umpire the opportunity to blow such calls. For the record: I've b****ed in the past when he was safe in that exact same situation, there just isn't a lot to be gained but there is a lot to be lost. Aviles playing like an MVP still against the White Sox. Wasn't it Rios' fault for the bad slide on that call at second? 21/29 isn't a great stolen base ratio. Wow, White Sox getting bailed out there by the Royals' bad baserunning.

Now we're back to the old White Sox. Royals doing an imitation of the Texas Rangers with their Augusta National infield. Just not quite enough offense...and Rios was safe, so it should be 3-2. Jones is as cold as he was hot at the beginning of the year. But perhaps most troubling, the problems we've had for a decade with pitchers we haven't seen.

Now we're back to the old White Sox. Royals doing an imitation of the Texas Rangers with their Augusta National infield. Just not quite enough offense...and Rios was safe, so it should be 3-2. Jones is as cold as he was hot at the beginning of the year. But perhaps most troubling, the problems we've had for a decade with pitchers we haven't seen.

I don't think Ozzie would find it very easy to DFA Jones, FWIW. They need him as PH power off the bench and for spelling anyone defensively, and just in general as injury insurance. The obvious concerns going forward are 3B, Beckham and Pierre, along with DH. For mid-season, that's quite a few questions marks to have offensively. I sincerely doubt they would trade any of the key components right now off the big league roster. It's going to come down to taking on additional salary commitments (or swapping them out for a Linebrink/Teahen/Pierre) OR which minor leaguers are expendable and not integral parts of the plan going forward. That's probably someone like Morel, Danks 2, Gilmore, Justin Greene, Brand. Short, Cleveland Santeliz, Nathan Jones, Santos Rodriguez, etc. I just don't see trading Flowers, Hudson, Mitchell (that's obvious) or Viciedo.