TLAK

He got the save. Hope he pitches as poorly all year long.

Think there is more to that kissing stuff than meets the eye?

Roland Hemond compares Ryan Sweeney to Harold Baines. Thats a pretty nice endorsement.

Here's Durham's 2001 line: Year G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG TB SH SF IBB HBP GDP 2001 152 611 104 163 42 10 20 65 23 10 64 110 .267 .337 .466 285 6 6 3 4 10 I never thought Durham was a prototypical lead off. 64 walks, 110 K's is not outstanding plate discipline. His OBP wasn't as high as you remember. I always thought Ray-Ray would have been better hitting 6 or 7. But Felipe Alou bats him lead off and I don't pretend to know more about baseball than he does. Despite my grousing, his numbers are head, shoulders and belly button better that Uribe's. Here is Juan's career line. Year G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG TB SH SF IBB HBP GDP 3 Seasons 314 1155 146 298 59 21 24 135 19 4 59 235 .258 .298 .408 471 13 7 2 10 26 His numbers sure don't support hitting him 1 (9 maybe). One more reason to watch the games this year to see how they handle him and how he responds.

I've been thinking about this all day. Last year I one of my biggests rags on JM was that he didn't communicate with his guys. I think it was Ginter who came up and Farmer asked him on the pregame how he would be used, his response was that Coop told him to be ready for anything. Here we have a guy ticketed for Bhama thrown into a game just to keep everybody else on schedule, he had a rough outing but they took the time to talk to him and tell him what they saw. I'm warming to Ozzie and his style, if unconventional, of management and leadership.

Change the tense, Mr. Prior is not playing any baseball at all just now. Also, please educate me and explain how a mild sprain that has not healed in 5 months will be all gone in 3 weeks? I think this guy's got a tear and they're gonna have to open his leg. Finally, yes I can be this stupid.

Jim Bullard is coming into the game. Get 'em!

Prior, Mercker and Remlinger are already down. Bakers a great manager? McKeon absolutely undressed him, Dusty is a moron. Clement an ace? Then how come he was 14-12 last year for the greatest team ever assembled in the history of baseball? They finished precisely one game ahead of a Houston team that lost it's #1 starter for a third of the season. Oswalt's back to 94 mph now and they added Pettitte and Clemens. Jeff Kent is healthy after missing about 30 games last year, I agree with Chisoxfn on them, they are pretty damn good. Also the Cardinals had all sorts of trouble and were still only 3 back. With that offense if they get any luck at all with the pitchers they are also going to be very good. The Blue Vermin are not going to finish higher than 3rd. Enough grub talk, I really don't care where they wind up. My divisional picks for 2004: Toronto White Sox Seattle WC: Boston Houston San Francisco Florida WC: Atlanta

The Brewers and Pirates alone are worth a run. Sorry, I was just ranting because ChiCubfn is eating the baloney from the media with a great big spoon. Last year the two clubs finished within two wins of each other, but the grub darlings are allstars, they have the best pitchers, fielders, hitters, hot dogs, announcers, beer, bunters, fielders, bullpen, starters and grounds crew in the history of baseball. I've been watching baseball for 40 years and that grub team is not that good, every thing went right for them last year and they still missed the series, I fully expect them to crash back into the depths of the greasy fetid mire from which they arose.

Elo won 21 last year. Prior won 19. Elo's era was half a run higher, subtract 1 for playing in the AL and he's better. Since 2000 Mark is 49 - 34 V Wood is 38 - 28, Garland is 30- 32 V Zambrano is 18 - 21. Schoenwiess is 22 - 21 Clement is 26 - 23. Maddux used to be a great pitcher, no one knows how much he has left in the tank. Wright is becoming a very good pitcher. I'd take the Sox starters over the grub any day of the week. I hope everybody keeps lapping up the BS about the vaunted pitching up north. I'm going to win a lot of money from blue vermin fans this year.

You could be spot on. Actually I thought the ARod - Jeter switch would have been done already, you know a big press conference where Jeter gives up his position for the love of the pin stripes. Violins in the background. Jeter has been brutal the last couple years, mostly due to injury, and while I haven't seen him yet this spring, it would be hard to convince me that even at his best the Jankees are better with him in front ARod - the greatest shortstop of the present era.

What a croc of baloney. Like any franchise wouldn't put ANYBODY out there who could get guys out? It's just the ebb and flow of life, take the same picture a couple years ago and people were be saying where did all the white pitchers go? The top guys were all back or latin. And the expert instruction? Did JR Richard or Bob Gibson get expert instruction? Vida Blue? Dave Stewart? Dwight Gooden? They just had arms and baseball brains. This will all even out as the years go by.

Didn't King George just acquire another 3rd baseman? Can't remember his name but it was in all the papers.

Every article I read still has Willie Harris starting at 2B but I'm starting to wonder if he is even sure to break with the big club. He's at .200 on the spring, including his 1 for 4 today. He also got caught stealing. Kelly Dransfeldt is hitting .320 with more at bats, while Juan Uribe is at .241 with 2 HR. Judging from his bunt attempts on TV over the weekend he doesn't fit in with the 'give me guy who play the game the right way' approach either. I'm a Willie backer but he's got to show he can earn his keep.

Me too. I'm thinking Grilli might be the 'Glover' this year. These other guys have to pitch, the 12th man might sit for a week or 12 days without getting in, plus if you don't keep him he goes back to the Marlins.

Danny Wright looked like a major leaguer. After Sammy's home run he came right after Alou and K'd him. As soon as Cotts hit Jackson he seemed to go into his 'deer in the headlights' mode, trying make his pitches better than perfect. He got Hubbard but a veteren, Tom Goodwin, stayed with him and got the game winning single. Who knows how long it would have went on without the caught stealing. For a guy who will be 24 this month, he looked awfully young. He sure as heck has the arm, I hope that all he needs is to go through these situations repeatedly against good hitters to develop better moxie and coolness when the game is on the line. He needs pitch every 5th day, and he's not ready for prime time. He's proved he can dominate AA but can't survive in the bigs yet. Destination: Charlotte.

Pregame blurb from Sox.Com It will be good see the young pitchers live, particulary Danny Wright. His rebounding to 2002 form is a big key for the team. Somebody call Stef - Neal Cotts is supposed to play.

I'm having an argument with a friend who insists that Major League Baseball is a much poorer game now than before expansion. Pointing to the Sox 5th starter competition he says none of these guys would have even had a shot of the big leagues in the old days. I'll see him tomorrow at the bar so I pulled this info from the Baseball Reference data base and the US Census Bureau. In 1953 out of every million Americans, 3.2 played in the big leagues. In 2003 the number is 3.1. Although the number of players has more than doubled due to expansion, the talent pool has more than kept up through the increase in population and importation of players from other countries. The talent pool prior to 1953 was further diminished by the exclusion of black Americans before they broke the color line in the late '40s. I argue that you have to be a better player to make the majors today than ever before. I don't know if I'll get this through his head, he doesn't accept the fact that Barry Latman, who made 21 starts for the '59 team going 8-5 on the way to as 13-13 career, not only isn't better, but couldn't even compete with Danny Wright. I didn't combine the little countries into 'other' because it's kind of cool to see that a guy from South Viet Nam (Danny Graves), Greece (Al Campanis) or Afghanistan (Jeff Bronkey) has played in the bigs.

Looks like Sean Lowe is out of baseball. The Royals released him last September, and I can't find any news on him signing for this year.

I am up to officially neutral on Ozzie. I disliked his antics during the NLCS; I hated his opening press conference and thought he was a clown. I even put a Bozo wig on one of his pictures and used it for my avatar. I thought all the sweetness and light coming out of ST was just PR, but I heard a story on the radio during the game yesterday that changed my opinion. Ed Farmer said Billy Koch asked Ozzie What if I give up 5 runs today? Ozzie said don't worry, I'm getting paid anyway. This is the exact right note for a head case like Koch; he looked like he was thinking about a million things last year, paralysis by analysis. I like the message of go out there and play your heart out, then let the chips fall where they may. I don't know if this will work with young players like Willie Harris or Danny Wright, but it was very refreshing after all the morbidly serious years of Jerry Manuel. We don't know anything about his game management; he might another Bevington for all we know. But I put my prejudice against him aside. I changed by avatar to the same generic Sox logo that hangs on my garage during the season, but bozog.jpg is still on my hard drive. I'll wait and see.

Link to Smith's Numbers: Baseball Reference Rotoworld says the Sox signed him to a minor league contract Jan 21. I must have lost him in all the buzz over Kelly Dransfeldt, who signed the same day.

Tommy John surgery. Unlikely we'll see him at all this year.

If the present trend of fewer home runs should continue over the next couple of seasons, in the face of increased drug testing, many will ascribe the high HR totals of the recent era to steroids. Evidence being that when testing came into play, the statistics returned to normal. Over the next few years Mark McGuire, Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa will go up for HOF voting. I speculate that a different standard will be applied to the steroid era. I think some of the achievements will be discounted and the old standards, like 500 home runs will be disregarded. But a sub-current of the debate might be whether or not steroids and the resultant rise in offense were good or bad for the game. The game took a terrible hit in the '94 strike. It came back partially when Cal Ripken broke the consecutive game record, and fully during the McGuire / Sosa home run chase. One can argue that despite the damage to the individuals, the depreciation of previous records, and the unlevel playing field for non-users, this was exactly what baseball needed at the time. This is pure speculation on my part.

This is an interesting Frank quote from the Sox site on the the topic of Ozzie: Sounds to me like Frank knows that Ozzie if full of bulls*** and just rolls his eyes over his antics. Perhaps we should take a clue from Frank and pay no attention to Ozzie's remarks, just judge him by his actions and results.

From the Sox web site: