Kenny Hates Prospects

QUOTE (rangercal @ May 21, 2009 -> 01:17 PM) If this were a PR move, this is bad PR. I will be pretty pissed when/if Peavy rejects this. This is a f***ing cocktease and whoever let this leak better not be Kenny. The original source was out of San Diego, so it was most likely a Pads exec or player that first got this out in the open.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ May 21, 2009 -> 12:49 PM) Were they just on? What did they say? Oops, I guess we do have a game to play. f***, would he be set to potentially start one of the games in Anaheim. I might have to get off my ass and make sure I go to that game. I'm currently slated to go at least on Monday. Stone ranted about the Cubs for about 5 minutes, then Hawk said something along the lines of "shheeearrgg abbaagabba dad gummit!"

"The Padres would choose those two players from a list of at least four, and would continue scouting the players before making a decision. " Upchurch, Carter, Hudson, Leesman, Infante... has to be 2 in that group I'd think.

QUOTE (SoxFan562004 @ May 21, 2009 -> 11:53 AM) well if multiple sources are saying the AL thing, to me, it's a real issue for him. I think the one glimmer of hope is that the Pads, Sox or Peavy's agent haven't come out and flat out said it's a dead deal. If you paid attention to the Peavy rumors over the offseason, that deal with the Cubs was supposedly alive for like 3 months. Jake the Pussy doesn't commit to anything. He leaves his agent hanging, and his agent tries to keep his client's options open since the Pads suck and want to move him.

QUOTE (bighurt574 @ May 21, 2009 -> 11:44 AM) Has this not been posted yet? It's been up for a bit. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4191562 That's the article that kills the deal. Jake the Pussy doesn't even do his own pussyfooting around, he has to let his agent do it for him. "Uh, yeah, um... we think that maybe the AL is too scary and we've heard that Ozzie is a big meany." -Barry Axelrod

This was no smokescreen by the Sox like the Scoretards would like you to believe. The bottom line is that Jake the Pussy is too much of a pussy to not be a pussy. f*** that pussy.

11:31am: Brock talked to Peavy's agent Barry Axelrod. Axelrod hasn't spoken to Peavy yet today, but was asked by the Padres "about Jake's feeling about the possibility of (playing for) the White Sox." So wait a minute here. This s*** is all over the f***ing sports news, all over the radio in Chicago and San Diego, all over ESPN, and Peavy hasn't even talked to his agent?!?! That is completely f***ing ridiculous. Whether he comes or not, they had to have spoken about this.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ May 21, 2009 -> 11:01 AM) Jim Edmonds to our Sox i believe. Carlos Delgado as well in 2004, but I don't think anyone found out about that until after the fact.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ May 21, 2009 -> 10:27 AM) How awesome would it be if it was Broadway and Mcculloch? That would be sooooooo awesome!!! ....please don't let Upchurch be a PTBNL.......

QUOTE (BearSox @ May 21, 2009 -> 10:02 AM) Maybe Getz? But if he was part of it, he probably wouldn't be listed as a PTBNL. Who are some MI prospects we have besides Beckham? Does Retherford count? What about Kuhn? He seems like a very Getz like player from what I've read. Escobar, Morel, Gilmore.... Edit: Actually, I remember reading about Gilmore after the Vazquez trade and he reminded me a lot of Vitters.

What do you mean you don't want to play for Ozzie? He'll make a woman out of you!

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ May 21, 2009 -> 09:49 AM) The Sox should have Obama call Peavy and tell him its his duty as an American to play for the White Sox. Is waterboarding a form of torture? If not, then maybe it can be useful. Damn you Peavy, don't be a f***ing pussy! American League hitters aren't hiding under your bed or in your closet, so you can stop checking with the flashlights every night! Just talk to Hawk and he'll you the biggest thing you have to worry about in the ALC is Carlos Gomez (the next Rickey Henderson BTW).

Wow! First off, I love the idea of trading Poreda & Richard. Secondly, I doubt Jake the Pussy is going to come pitch in the big, bad American League. If he decides to accept this deal I will no longer call him that.

I don't know why anyone is happy about this. The best case scenario to me would have been Lilli going to the bench to sit there with Pods getting taken off this team. Lilli is the one guy on this team that Ozzie wouldn't start in CF over Brian. Now we're going to end up with Pods in CF every day, you just watch. We'll be 10 games out and Pods will be in f***ing CF and BA will be riding the bench. Anderson will get marginalized in a platoon role and go hitless in like 3 consecutive but sporadic starts, and then he'll sit there the rest of the year. And don't think that Pods is going to pull his groin again this year; oh no, he only does that when we're counting on him.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 18, 2009 -> 11:55 PM) The other problem with trading for Morales is we're back to overloading with 1B/DH types. We still have to find places for Viciedo, Brandon Allen and Tyler Flowers (if he can't catch, they will want his bat in the line-up somewhere). If we want to go in the direction of speed/athleticism, maybe Shelby factors in as well at DH since his defense isn't up to par with Jordan Danks. It all depends on what they would do with the roughly $15-20 million they would save by dealing Konerko. If they invested it in the draft, signing international FA's or the starting rotation, it would be fine. Certainly carving away all the pieces from the 2005 team won't be popular moves. We don't even know how happy Buehrle would be hanging around long-term for 2-3 years of rebuilding, or if he is serious about retiring roughly 2-3 seasons from now. No reason to trade for Morales anyway. If the Sox took the money they would save in salary dumps and invested it in the farm then that would be great. The problem is, how much will they actually save when they factor in the decrease in walk-up sales, concessions, etc. that comes with dealing off veteran core players? Maybe the Sox can make up the difference Major League-style by filling the walls with chiropractor ads and so forth?

QUOTE (Special K @ May 19, 2009 -> 10:00 AM) Is the Big Hurt still available? I think he is exactly what this team needs, some solid veteran leadership. In all seriousness though, this team is lacking the key ingredient to any successful season a White Sox team has had over the past few years, and that is pitching. I know Danks has been underachieving, and im still hoping Floyd can turn it around and figure some things out, and Richard looked solid yesterday too (by the way that just proves how bad Ozzie is for running Contreras out there for almost 25% of the season to get shelled while Richard continually pitched well in long relief) , but clearly we don't have what it takes to make a run at this division. I don't see any reason why we can't bring these young guys (Beckham/Poreda) up and let them see if they can contribute now. If you look back at the past decade, most of the superstars playing right now came up at about the age these guys are at right now(with the exception of Jerry Owens). Are you guys going to tell me Beckham doesn't contribute more to our squad than Lillibridge? I say get the expermient started now, stick Ramirez in center to see if he can play, Becks at short, and lets get Poreda some starts. I want some stability before I start calling up my top prospects. The last thing I want to do is bring a Gordon Beckham or Brandon Allen up in the middle of a bad season full of anger, negativity, and sulking, and topped with the burden of reporters swirling around asking everyone about possible trades and firings. If we're going to bring up the young guys to see what they have, let's clean house first and look to start a brand new season in July. Otherwise, keep them away from this mess. About the pitching though, you're right, our staff sucks. But that's not changing anytime soon. And for the record, I hope we trade Poreda.

QUOTE (gsoxs1 @ May 19, 2009 -> 09:18 AM) On Mike and Mike this morning, Jason Stark was talking about the Mets looking at Nick Johnson from Washington. But the Mets don't want to go over the luxury tax before the trade deadline, so they probably will stay put for a while. If we did trade PK, the sox would need to eat much of his salary, which I don't see KW doing that. We could take on Ramon Castro in return which is $2.5M this year, but the Mets don't have any larger bad contracts other than Wagner, Delgado, and Luis Castillo, none of which make sense to take on to save the Mets money. Like you said, I doubt they eat a bunch of salary. Aubrey Huff might make a lot of sense for them though, or maybe Kevin Millar if they just want a veteran.

We gut this team and we're not winning anything anytime soon. We keep the veterans involved and at least there's a chance of an edge-of-your-seat rollercoaster ride over the next 2 seasons, which is at least better than nothing. I would only support completely gutting this team *if and only if* we take the $$$ savings - because moving most of our veteran players is going to only net us savings, not actually talented future pieces - and use that savings to build up a top 3 farm system in baseball, *and then* use those prospects to both build and acquire a new core. I don't want the Kids Can Play horses*** anymore. Build up a cache, then trade it in. But that still means lots of losing in the meantime - lots and lots and lots of losing, because we have ZERO starting pitching and you don't win jack s*** without starting pitching. I don't want to wait another 4+ years to finally develop another SP that is worth a damn. Get some good spects, then when someone becomes available, trade whatever you have to trade for him and then lock his ass up. And on top of that, if the Sox are going to tank it all, I want to see the Sox start negotiating with Borass-represented prospects, and I want to see the best players taken regardless of signability, and I want to see MLB contracts offered if applicable. Porcello would sure look nice in our rotation ATM. If the Sox try to rebuild while still trying to make it as hard on themselves as possible by refusing to negotiate with particular agents and by refusing to give out MLB contracts to draft spects and by refusing to go over slot in the first 5+ rounds then there's no f***ing point. I hope the recent MLB contracts to Cuban players and the over slot bonuses to Danks and Beckham are signs of things to come.

During a garbage season it usually works in reverse for me. I accept it very easily early on and don't really care all that much, but later on it depresses me as I realize how long the season is. The bargaining part is more about trade ideas and draft picks, which is just about the only remotely interesting part of a bad season. I will beg for prospects to be called up instead of playing bad veterans. The anger comes when the team starts winning again but the wins mean nothing. I root for individual performances from young players I like and horrible performances leading to losses by other players I don't want to see anymore. Denial is the last part where I try to remove the entire season from my memory.

QUOTE (greg775 @ May 15, 2009 -> 05:18 PM) Lot of stuff in your post. Lilly has not been a f***ing bench player as you put it. He's been playing a lot of baseball and making a ton of outs. He's hit worse than most pitchers would given as many at bats. We could direct our anger at Oz for playing him or KW, but at some point you get sick of seeing Lilly out there since he is the one with the bat in his hands. Forgive me for not wanting to watch him ever bat again. Yes there will be b****ing about our other players who should not be on a ML roster. You've got to admit we have some very bad fringe baseball players on this team. Right now I'd settle for Lexi and Fields start to prove they are studs, not duds. And Quentin start being Quentin. We've received a break. We could be a ton of games out if we were in the Jays' division. It's time to start playing baseball and not get shut out on a fairly regular basis. I'm not saying we should all ignore the results and say he's a wonderful player, but it seems that he is being used as an excuse a bit too much. Look, everyone knew that he probably wasn't going to come in and perform all that well in the Majors if he had to play every single day or close to that. Lilli is a bench player. He can play plus defense at short, plus he can play 2B, CF, even 3B or RF I'm sure if he had to in a pinch. He can pinch run. Those qualities are very important on a (key word here) GOOD baseball team, which is something that at this point we are certainly not. And Lilli is making the league minimum, so he's not a guy we can look at and say we're spending $1M+ more on than what we should be spending for that kind of player. If you put Lillibridge in the lineup on a regular basis then you've just got a bench player in the field. You don't have a bad starter, you have a bench player in a spot where he shouldn't be. Pablo Ozuna and Rob Mackiowiack as examples were good bench players who were s*** on as bad players when they were taken out of their roles. And both players, yes, hit a lot better than Brent, but those guys didn't bring the defense, the speed (in Rob's case) and the versatility of Brent. You take DJ Carrasco, and he's been very nice as a garbage man. Put him in the back of the pen or in the rotation and he's going to suck, but you don't take that out on him. You look at the organization as a whole and say, "Why don't we have anyone better than this on the farm? Why haven't we made a trade? Why haven't we signed anyone?" and so on. Brent Lillibridge can do some things as long as he's used appropriately. I agree that we've got a lot of bench players on this team in starting roles. Pods shouldn't be out there everyday either. But you have to wonder about what it is some Sox fans are asking for when it comes to guys who can actually come off the bench, step in as starters, and be productive. Those guys are expensive for the most part (either talent-wise through trade or monetarily) and most of them are starters or platoon players anyway. And why even pay the price, because in a perfect world, your team is doing so well that you don't need those guys to step in and play well as starters. So when you build a bench, IMO what you should do is build as cheaply as possible with a player for each role and whatever extra you have budgeted you should spend in other areas, in our case most notably the farm system. If you get into a situation where you're relying on bench guys to be more than they are capable of being, then it really doesn't matter at that point because you're already screwed in a pretty big way. I'm 100% with you on Fields and Alexei. They need to step it up. Even if we lose 85+ games this year, those guys still need to step up and let us know they're for real so that way we can get on with shaping the team for 2010 and beyond. Personally I believe in both of them, but it's time they got something going.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ May 15, 2009 -> 09:05 PM) Obviously I was being sarcastic. Sorry, should have put it in teal. Rongey said on the postgame show that Walker's basic premise was that the mechanical changes in the hitters happened during the offseason and that it was VERY VERY difficult to make any adjustments with the hitters during the course of the season. He cited the examples of Thome and Konerko last year...that Walker knew what was wrong with their swings, hands, balance, stride, etc., but that it was a year-long battle to get them both out of bad mechanics. Hawk's favorite phrase, "muscle memory," also comes to mind. Essentially, the argument was that Tiger Woods can watch someone with a horrible gold swing and tell him points A, B, C of what is wrong with the swing mechanics, but that it's very hard to correct them, because it's almost like starting over from scratch and totally building up your swing from ZERO, deconstructing a swing. For instance, you watch Alexei and Konerko tonight, they had swings (homer and single to RF) where they had almost no extra hand movement or hitch in their swings. Simple to see and diagnose, hard to "fine tune" during the season, when baseball is 90% mental and confidence. Rongey has kind of a point, but if you've heard his show once you already know his stance on everything. The only time the show is fresh is during a rain delay when he's not speaking. The Tiger Woods argument - and BTW I'm on the fence with this whole issue as it is - applies to almost everything in life in general. Why fire the manager at Wal-Mart because his employees are slacking all the time? Tiger Woods could walk in there and tell every Wal-Mart employee exactly what they are doing wrong, how to change it, etc. but ultimately it is up to the Wal-Mart employees themselves to stock the shelves instead of hanging out in the parking lot in their cars smoking pot and listening to Cypress Hill. Take just about any situation you want and the Tiger Woods argument applies, and in many ways makes total sense. However, it certainly doesn't account for how a guy like Phil Garner can come to a s***ty Houston Astros team (s***ty not in terms of talent, but performance) and take them all the way to the WS. The truth is that reality is not very accepting of the Tiger Woods argument, which is why people of all walks of life get hired and fired all the time. People in charge who don't do the heavy lifting get blamed when they shouldn't get blamed and get praised when they shouldn't get praised. And, you *never* see the Tiger Woods argument used as anything but a philosophically minded excuse. For example, no intelligent Sox fan would ever say that any old pitching coach can come in and replace Don Cooper. If Walk is a great hitting coach just like Coop is a great pitching coach, and yet if results that appear under Coop do not appear under Walk, then something is wrong. You can put it on the players all you want, but in a society that needs a power structure for everything, Walk's neck has to constantly be out there. And again, I'm not taking sides here, just trying to rip up another one of Rongey's dumbass arguments. I know he has to toe the line and that is expected, but it's really annoying at times, especially when he believes he's 100% correct and asserts his dumb opinions by acting like a cocksucker to his poor callers who are obviously crushed by Sox losses.

I'm not really one way or the other on this issue, but if we're going to replace Walker it should either be around the trade deadline if we fall out of it, in which case we'll be looking to move our veteran sluggers, or it should be over the offseason when those guys are gone. Dye IMO is probably not coming back unless both PK and Thome are gone, both because of his salary and the fact that I think they want more defensively out of RF in the future and would view him as a DH/part time OF. I could see that as a possibility though because the Sox like to have at least one veteran there all the time, no matter if it is a rebuild or not. Thome OTOH is almost certainly gone unless he and the Sox tear up this contract and re-work a new deal during the season (is that even possible?) to get away from the arbitration situation, because if arb is an issue there's no way he's coming back. Then there''s Paulie, and if he has a good year I think he'll be worth something decent *if* we either eat a few million on his 2010 contract (probably unlikely) or if we take back say a reliever/bench player on a small bad contract with negative value. No matter how this season turns out, we're going to in all likelihood have even more of a youth movement after this season, so if we're going to bring in another hitting coach we should do it then so that way we have most of our young hitters all starting from basically the same place. And, if we do fall out of it and become sellers at the deadline, I would in that case much, much rather make a change then instead of waiting until after the season. That way if the guy we bring in works, the hitters have more time with him and they will also have the opportunity to end the year on a high note under the new coach, which could change the way they will prepare themselves over the offseason in a positive manner. Another reason I'd rather go the trade deadline replacement route is because if the new guy doesn't work out, we can make a change over the offseason and start anew in Spring Training.

Small sample size on Hamilton and he was playing hurt. Small sample size on Andruw Jones as well, but he is killing the ball.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ May 15, 2009 -> 12:45 PM) I like what I've seen from Nix so far, but he has little experience at SS or in the OF, so I am not sure you can make the claim he is as good defensively as Lillibridge. At 2B I'm sure he is. Otherwise, maybe not, though the jury is still out. Right now, in terms of defensive value, Lillibridge trumps Nix. Thanks, I was just going to post that. And BTW I still can't understand the Lillbridge hate around here. Yes, he's been overwhelmingly underwhelming this season, but he's a f***ing bench player. He's there to play defense and pinch run and he's making the league minimum plus has minor league options left. With Nix so far not looking bad at all as a UT player Lilli can go down and work on his swing and everyone can lay off. Seriously, this is like the Andy Gonzalez crap and Andy's 3 error game was far worse than anything Lillibridge has done. And still, Andy Gonzalez was never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever even anything CLOSE to a reason why we sucked so f***ing bad in 2007, just like Brent Lillibridge is nowhere near anything close to a reason we suck now. When your bench players are forced into everyday spots because you have nothing on the farm to fill those spots, and when 3/5 of your starting rotation sucks dick, then you don't sit around and blame it on a bench player not hitting the baseball. And watch, Lillibridge will get sent down and then suddenly everyone will start b****ing about Corky f***ing Miller. Just like the virulent anti-Chris Widger campaign that ended up bringing us the great Sandy Alomar Jr. for the 39th time.

In all seriousness, if you could, would you trade a pretty good prospect or two to the Rangers for Rudy Jaramillo? And if so, what type of package would be the breaking point? And if you were the Rangers, what would it take to let go of your hitting coach? Serious question here folks. I'm wondering.