TLAK

Rotoworld is focused on Fantasy Baseball, you have to keep that in mind when they assess a deal. Emphasis on stats. They still have the best organized list of transactions and rumor on the web, though. What we need is a Jayski's silly season site for baseball.

Excellent analysis. Range factor basically compares the outs and assists a player makes per inning to everybody else at that position. A late inning replacement will play behind more closer types who thoretically throw more strike outs and grounders, he just won't get equivelent chances. Thank you for the education.

The union can't afford to give an inch on this. If any crack were to appear where owners could renegotiate a contract downward it would be open season on players coming off a bad year or injury. They would find a way to squeeze Billy Koch, Moe Vaughn and the like, costing them the millions they earned with prior performance. There are smart signings and dumb signings. I bet Loiza wishes he didn't give the Sox a $4Mil option for '04, I think he could easily double it as a free agent. But Esteban has to live up to his contract and so do the owners.

The Rotoworld guys agree with you: Its another case of the White Sox slightly over paying a young player in return for buying out his arbitration and first FA years. We'll have to watch the games to see if he turns into a bargain in 06. It will be interesting to see how Ozzie uses him, Manuel batted him anywhere from 2nd to 6th. I personally would hit him 3rd and follow him with Maggs, Thomas and Konerko.

I voted yes. Maggs averages a .307 BA and 30 HR per year. When he is hot he carries the team, when not he still holds his own. He plays good defense, never has gotten in trouble off the field and never whines.

Based on the present roster I think you have it right. You have to protect Jose from lefties, and he is a very nice bat off the bench against righties in the latter innings.

More Ozzie:

How about Jose Conseco. He hurt his arm and got his manager, Kevin Kennedy, fired!

AO = Fly out. MLB just has a garbage record in the database.

It's certainly there in MLB.com stats but its gotta be an error. I cross checked it with BaseBall Reference and they don't have it. I think some of us would remember if Big Frank ever pitched, plus JM would have been out of here in 1999.

I have the same feeling about Ozzie the clown. I just can't believe this guy is going to be taken seriously. KW alluded to the issue in his interview this afternoon on ESPN, saying he discussed Guillen's 'maturity' with JR. Although KW came away satisfied I know I saw Bozo in the NLCS faking a mitt after his pitcher lost the handle on a ball and it sailed into the dugout. Maturity? He talked very big in his introductory press conference. Things like, if players don't advance a runner from second base he'll bunt them next time and if they don't like it they can have their agent talk to Kenny and get traded out of town. I've never worked for a guy who made big threats and actually did it. The guys who actually did it never said nothing until goodbye. I suspect Ozzie's all smoke. I hope to be wrong, but I just can't picture these words coming out of Al Lopez, Tony LaRussa or Bob Lemon.

Gulp! According to the AL rankings the Sox had starting pitchers 3, 9 & 13. Relievers 4 & 17. DH/OF 2, 11, 17 & 23. SS/3B/2B 13, 33 & 35. Catcher 7. How the heck could this team lose 76 games?

It's an exhaustive subject. In a nut shell: The contract runs through 2006. The owners wanted more money. The players wanted more money. Collective bargaining is a process where the workers negotiate some working conditions, as a group, with management. It developed in 19th century England when the owners were oppressing the workers (the conditions were truly horrible) and any individual who objected was fired and blackballed. Bargaining in a collective group forced the owners to negotiate because they could not fire everyone and stay in business. Debate rages whether collective bargaining is necessary today, what with the current liberal work laws. Plus whether or not these laws would continue to exist without unions. Revenue sharing is an attempt to reinstitute some financial competitiveness among major league teams. Teams have always split gate reciepts, but with the emergence of non-shared revenue sources that did not exist when the leagues were formed, such as radio, television and now local cable networks a disparity in the amount of income has occured. Details on the baseball agreement can be found at http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/news/mlb_labor.jsp

It didn't decline, here's the numbers: Minnesota Year Attendance 2003 1,946,011 2002 1,924,473 2001 1,782,929 2000 1,000,760 1999 1,202,829 White Sox Year Attendance 2003 1,939,524 2002 1,676,911 2001 1,766,172 2000 1,947,799 1999 1,338,851

I'll defer to your judgement and pipe down. But it's gonna take some convincing to sell me on Ozzie as manager.

Rex, thanks for the correction on Tejera, we were harrassing a bar maid into switching back and forth between the Marlins, Red Sox and BlackHawks so it was hard to stay with the thread on any one of them. As to Ozzie clowning with the players, I've trained workers moving up from the ranks into supervision and the first (usually the hardest) lesson is that you are not one of the boys anymore. No one will treat you as the boss unless you act like the boss, the representative of management. If you try to stay one of the guys your charges will not take you seriously, they will pick and choose when they want to listen and you will fail. A good boss creates an environment where each team member feels important and respected. Mocking one of your employee's in front his peers, not to mention on national television, is not acceptable. I've screwed up in presentations in front of people (nothing remotely like last night's stage) and let me tell you, you keep up a brave face but feel like crawling under a rock. If my boss added to it by making fun of me in front of all those people I'd probably walk out on him. If Ozzie was a lead person for me, I'd have a long, one sided talk with him and demand he appologize to the player. I think a prospective manager should exhibit some management skills.

During last night's rout, I think it was Pavano who lost his grip on a pitch and it sailed into the Marlins dugout. A couple pitches later Ozzie Guillen is shown on national television in the dugout holding up a glove during the pitchers wind up. The pitcher had to be embarrassed enough without his own coach mocking him. Perhaps Ozzie was trying to keep things loose on the bench but it was a lack of respect for the feelings of his own player. If I were the pitcher, I would never forgive Ozzie and never want to play for him. With his team getting bombed, at a time leadership is needed, Ozzie turns into a adolescent prankster. No clown who pulls a stunt like this should ever manage.

Is this a new issue? I don't think the climate has changed over the last 1000 years or so. What did the old timers used to do about it?

How about Kevin Kennedy? Year__Team______G___W__L___WP___Finish 1993__Texas_____162 86 76 .531 ___ 2 1994__Texas_____114 52 62 .456 ___ 1 1995__BostonRS _144 86 58 .597 ___ 1 1996__BostonRS _162 85 77 .525 ___ 3

I just listened to John Rooney do the ALDS and was struck by how much more into the game he was compared his White Sox broadcasts. He brings energy and excitement, and calls the game in 'real time', rather than 10 seconds after the play because he was talking about golf with his partner. I've always respected Buck Martinez but never liked him much before on the air. He is as dry as overdone toast. But, in this series he and Rooney are fitting together like a hand and a glove. Martinez doesn't need to comment after every pitch, he just pipes up when he has something valuable to say. With Rooney on top of the game, his comments are informative and lend a nice texture to the show. My knee jerk reaction is to blame my fellow St. Rita Alumni Ed Farmer for the comparatively poor broadcasts of the White Sox games, but I think it runs deeper than just him. ESPN advertises the games as the Ed and John talk show, and plays clips of them talking about anything except baseball. I surmise they have a vision that people will tune in just to listen to them rather than the game. Die hard fans like me will stay tuned despite the BS because we are into the game, but the idle patter might take some listeners from say, Jay Hood, across the dial. They might be right, but it sticks in my craw. I understand that over the course of 162 games, there will be some clunkers where hearing that Ed uses water on his wheat chex is better than the game, but not as a rule. There were many times this summer where the excitement of the game itself was missed. Rooney's performance in the ADLS is radio baseball at its best. I'd love to get a dose of it during the summer.

A good realist would know the boys haven't won a play off series since 1917, under Pants Rowland.

Baloney, he is not a good manager. He's got a pitcher going for a no-hitter in the Seventh with a 5-0 lead and leaves Everett in left field. I like Everett but he's no golden glove. A ball that Rowand would have caught easily falls in. I also thought about Roberto for Aaron Miles. If you have a chance to accomplish something great you have to go for it and try make it happen, he just waited around hoping. The story of the whole season.

Year League Team G W L WP Finish 1989 AL East NYY 40 18 22 .450 5 1990 AL East NYY 49 18 31 .367 7 ...........TOTAL 89 36 53 .404 Hmmm...

So is 100, but the Sox won't score that many runs tonight We might need that 7

7 is better than 6