Kenny Hates Prospects

I don't want realignment, but I do want to overhaul the scheduling and interleague play systems. Here's how it should be done IMO: -Move the Pirates to the AL Central. Move the Royals to the AL West. Each division in baseball now has 5 teams. -In order to make the 15 AL vs. 15 NL system work, interleague starts on opening day and ends on the last day of the season, so at any time in baseball there's at least 1 interleague series going on. This way all teams have an opponent. Breakdown of the 162 games: -Each AL team is given an NL rival team. Each AL team plays each non-rival NL team once per season in a 3-game set, with home/road alternating each year. So, the Sox for example would play 7 NL teams at home and 7 NL teams on the road. 3 games X 14 teams = 42 games total, with 21 on the road and 21 at home. -Each AL and NL team plays their same-league, non-divisional opponents twice per year (1 home/1 road) in a 3-game set. 60 games total: 30 road, 30 home. -Each team plays it's divisional rival 14 times per season: 1 4-game set at home, 1 4-game set on the road, 1 3-game set at home, 1 3-game set on th road. 56 games total. -Total so far is 158, leaving 4 games left. Right before the All-Star break have an AL/NL "rival" series where each team plays their MLB-dictated rival 2 times at home and 2 times on the road. Grand total is 81 games at home and 81 games on the road.

I don't really care where Fedor fights, I just want him to hurry up and finish out his commitment to M-1 so he can go to the UFC. Does anyone know exactly what kind of stake Fedor has in M-1? Has that ever been reported anywhere? Meltzer maybe?

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Mar 1, 2010 -> 01:56 AM) To which I respond to some of you..... EAT MY SHORTS! I wouldn't put a whole lot of stock in that quote right now. To say a player who is as raw as Mitchell (and who only has 139 career MiLB PA) is going to jump A+ ball and head straight to AA well before the first ST game has even been played is a bit premature. And if the Sox do that IMO it will be a sign that they're shopping him, because really, why else would you want to rush a player like this?

QUOTE (knightni @ Mar 1, 2010 -> 01:16 PM) So, if Hudson, Harrell etc. have an awful Spring and Torres has an ERA under 1, you wouldn't want him to make the roster? If that happened then Torres would deserve the spot, but he would also need to be on a very short leash. I don't see that happening at all though. Maybe Dolsi and Santos stink the place up, and maybe Harrell can't throw a strike to save his life, but I don't see Torres outperforming Hudson. If Torres makes this team IMO it will be the result of a perfect storm of injuries and collapses along with a nice stat line coming from B games.

I don't see Gordon signing anything like that now. He almost won ROY (won 2/3) and is already a star in Chicago. He'll beast it this year and then we'll have to offer him something serious over the offseason if we expect him to listen. But yeah, $12.5M guaranteed over his 3 arb years is pretty weak, especially when you throw in a $7.5M team option for his first FA year.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 1, 2010 -> 01:07 PM) I dont understand why people give Cowley the time of day. His claim to fame is insulting Toronto and not standing up for the Canadian national anthem. Or maybe his claim to fame is that he was suspended from voting on the hall of fame, because he was an embarrassment. As long as he is affiliated with Sun-Times, I wont read their publication. If enough people stop reading the Sun-Times, we wont have to hear from Cowley again. Dude, remember when Jerry Reinsdorf and I believe Andy MacFail co-wrote that letter asking for the hiney bird to be put to pasture? Remember how that didn't work? If JR can't do it, we can't either. This is what sportswriters are these days and there aren't enough hardcore Sox fans around to do anything about it.

I hope to God Carlos Torres does not make this team. If the Sox don't want Hudson in the pen then at least Dolsi, Santos, Santeliz, etc. have some upside. Personally I'll be rooting for Lucas Harrell as the Plan B to Hudson if the big arms fail.

QUOTE (The Ginger Kid @ Mar 1, 2010 -> 12:56 PM) aren't the same people who follow on this board the same fan base that Cowley is supposed to be appealing to? And yet he seeks to alienate. Genius. Think I'll drop a line to the editor, just for s***s and giggles. Not really. We're a small collection of Sox nerds and we don't represent the majority of the fanbase.

My guess is Cowley reads SoxTalk and he gets off on reading the reactions to his attacks. And he may be a douche, but that 3-way rumor with the Angels always sounded like bulls*** anyway, so who cares if he brings it up again? And actually I confess, I'm starting to like Cowley more. He's a total piece of s*** but at least he has fun with it. Twitter is ghey though so I won't follow him on that.

TYVM JPN

QUOTE (bighurt4life @ Feb 27, 2010 -> 09:32 PM) Pretty good list but I think that they should reconsider 1417. Rafael Dolis, P, CHC and, 1418. Maurice Gartrell, OF, CHW. IMO they should at least swap these two guys. Gartrell doesn't have the ceiling but has a lower floor, but good list overall. This is the best use of sarcasm on the internet I've seen in a long time. You should get an award for this, seriously.

QUOTE (Sockin @ Feb 27, 2010 -> 08:53 PM) Nothing really new here but Peavy wants A-Gon on the Sox and has already expressed this to Kenny. http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/story/1298528...aking-own-pitch This could be kind of new, at least for some people: Kenny's not giving up Gordon, but it sure puts a lot of doubt into the talk about Hudson + D2 + Flowers being enough for the Padres with Kenny as the hesitant one. That never made sense to me anyway. Besides, if Kenny was close to getting Halladay then he was already cool with shipping Hudson and Flowers out the door, and there's no way D2 is a deal-breaker for Adrian Gonzalez as long as Kenny's in charge.

QUOTE (zenryan @ Feb 26, 2010 -> 12:28 PM) Well they dont have much choice either since he is the champ. PRIDE use to give all their champs a can once in awhile just to get their champ on a card quicker. I personally cant stand Mir, so I hope he wins so we can see the hype of Lesnar-Mir 3. And Mir better watch it, he said he wants Lesnar to be the first to die of octagon related injuries but if Lesnar crushes Mir again, Mir might suicide himself. The guy has such an unhealthy obsession of Lesnar that his life might collapse after another beatdown. Personally I don't really mind Mir. I have tons of respect for someone who can go from being right on the cusp of being cut from the UFC and ten years later ending up as an answer to a trivia question to becoming a legit top contender with quality wins over quality opponents and one of the better draws in the sport. He's cocky as f***, and generally I don't like that, but I think his WEC commentating has me overlooking that quite a bit. And I do think Mir is pretty underrated and over-criticized as a commentator too, because while he may be a homer (Torres and Faber are to Mir what the Sox are to Hawk), he does do a good job of staying on top of things and explaining what's happening in the cage, and that has to be extremely tough especially when dealing with the WEC guys who just go, go, go. But that said, I get the same creepy "Mir might suicide himself" feeling too. Maybe that's because Mir *is* creepy. Brock will crush what's left of his soul if they ever meet again. The Brock fan part of me wants to see Brock destroy Mir in a trilogy fight, but the MMA fan part of me wants to see Brock and Carwin because that's a lot more interesting, and because it'll force Brock to showcase his stand-up and clinch work a lot more. But I really, really hope Brock gets Cain because I'm sick of hearing all the "Cain will smash Brock", "Cain will smash Fedor" crap. Frate Train > Hype Train.

I will go out on a limb here (sarcasm) and call Barry as Mirko's last opponent in the UFC. Rothwell-Yvel definitely could be fun to watch though.

A sport is either A) any competition involving heavy physical activity in which men so strongly outperform women that the women are either held out of the sport entirely or given their own league, or B) any competition in which males are asked to test their manliness by demonstrating their proficiency in tasks that since the dawn of man have universally fallen under the responsibility of the males within a given tribe or community, most specifically tasks relating to the procurement of food, self-defense, the defense of a tribe or community, the expansion of a tribe or community, and the taking of wives. This is why NASCAR (Danica Patrick), golf (LPGA, but no heavy physical activity), poker, beer pong, cheerleading, bowling etc. are not sports, but log-throwing (women can't do it) fishing (food), hunting (food), archery (food/fighting), and fencing (fighting) are. And if it existed, this is also why competitive polygamy would be a sport. Under this definition, war, not soccer, is the most popular team sport in the world.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 26, 2010 -> 08:46 AM) WTF would ever posses someone to rank 2029 minor league baseball players??? I dunno, but putting Carlos Torres so high is pretty dumb. The top Sox ones: Hudson 76 Mitchell 93 Flowers 98 Viciedo 115 Danks 121 Morel 218 Torres 286 Phegley 324 Thompson 346 ...and it goes on.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 25, 2010 -> 03:21 PM) I know you are upset about the DH situation, so am I, but its comical to believe that $1.5M for Kotsay is a bad contract. He's a role player, he can give you good D at 1B and the corners, play CF in a pinch, a lot of experience, and a better than average bat FOR A BENCH PLAYER. That's worth $1.5M nowadays. Ross Gload, who is basically the same guy right now except worse OF defense but more speed, got $2.6M/2, which is virtually the same money. That's market value for that player. The problem isn't the contract - the problem is he's going to be shoved into a basically starting role. I'll go along with this because it makes me hopeful. Maybe we'll be able to unload Kotsay then.

Agree that no one would want Kotsay at his contract, but the Jays will have to eat salary somehow to make a deal work with anyone, not just us. Taking back a contract and trying to get some use out of that money is generally seems to be preferable to outright eating salary, which is why I mentioned that. But yeah, if they didn't want to take on Kotsay and would rather just eat cash to open up roster space then that's cool too. Then we could just release Kotsay ourselves and eat that deal, or release Jones instead. Whatever. But we'd only need one backup OF between the two.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Feb 25, 2010 -> 03:04 PM) If we weren't willing to spend the money on Nick Johnson, we aren't going to trade Kotsay and a prosepct for the right to spend the same amount of money on Overbay. I just don't see KW and Guillen wanting and/or willing to do this for several reasons. The Sox tried to get Johnson but said they didn't have enough money. Later on in the offseason suddenly this money was there. Maybe Kenny lost confidence in the Kotsay/Jones platoon? Sure sounds like it. Maybe JR isn't too confident either. QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Feb 25, 2010 -> 03:04 PM) Also, they aren't just going to throw their remaining funds at just any player that upgrades the team, they are going to spend this money on a difference-maker. Whether we agree with him or not, KW probably viewed Damon as a difference maker in the lineup. Maybe the Sox did see Damon as a difference maker because of his speed. Speed aside though, Overbay is just as valuable to us because he's a veteran lefty bat to break up the righties. Damon BTW is a pure DH who does not belong in the field. Overbay would actually make our defense better. And anyway, I'm just throwing this idea out there. I have no idea whether the Sox would have any interest in Overbay.

QUOTE (justBLAZE @ Feb 25, 2010 -> 03:07 PM) How is Kotsay a bad contract? Wasn't he the only one productive for a couple of weeks last year? $1.5M for a light-hitting 1B/corner OF backup in this economy is a bad contract. That's what Thome got IIRC, and probably about what Dye will get. That's also more than Carrasco got despite coming off of two very good years, and it's only $500K less than what Branyan got.

QUOTE (MattZakrowski @ Feb 25, 2010 -> 02:59 PM) I didn't know his OBP was quite that good. I dunno if he's 7 mil good, but as long as the price isn't too steep, I'd say go for it. I agree, he's not $7M good, he's a bad contract. But so is Kotsay, and Overbay's a better fit than anyone left out there. If we either swapped Kotsay for him and/or offered the Jays a couple halfway decent prospects to eat salary, then we'd pretty much replace Damon at less than we offered Damon. That might not give us a lot of wiggle room, but a couple million extra could go a long ways toward a midseason acquisition, so we wouldn't be shooting our wad.

Johnny Damon, 36 Career: .288/.355/.439/.794 2009: .282/.365/.489/.854 Lyle Overbay, 33 Career: .279/.363/.449/.812 2009: .265/.372/.466/.838 Damon brings speed on the basepaths + SB. Lyle brings the ability to actually play the field. If we could get Overbay essentially for Kotsay and some no-namer, then sign me the f*** up please.

MLBTradeRumors has a link up saying the Blue Jays may be close to signing Cuban 1B Jose Julio Ruiz. If the Jays sign Ruiz, then Overbay, who IMO is already a realistic option for us, should become even more available. What about a Kotsay + prospect for Overbay deal? Overbay has one year remaining at $7M and the Sox were rumored to have offered at least $6M for Damon, so there's money available. I imagine just sending Kotsay and offering to pick up the $5.5M difference would be enough for the Jays to make a deal without getting anyone too significant in return as far as prospects go. If we picked up Overbay, we'd get a lefty stick to break up all those righties in the middle, plus we'd improve defensively at 1B over Paulie, who could DH most of the time. Andruw Jones would still get playing time as a 4th OF and occasional DH.

The worst thing Jones can do to this team is be mediocre. If he finds a time machine, great. If he sucks horribly, then that's okay too since it'll force Kenny to make an improvement. But if the Kotsay/Jones thing is just meh then Kenny will probably ride out until sometime in June before asking Mr. Brutally Honest Paul Konerko whether or not we need to improve the team.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ Feb 22, 2010 -> 10:43 AM) The issue here is the empirical evidence that shows Jones has fallen off before the age of 33. It's pure conjecture to assume that we're going to get some kind of youth movement from him, the numbers don't add up. I'm hopeful for him, and i like him a hell of a lot more in the DH spot then i do Kotsay, but i see no reason for dramatic optimism. In comparison to Jones' younger days it looks like he's going to bat with railroad tie. I'm not too optimistic either. I'll just go ahead and be optimistic about Putz, Rios, Quentin, Freddy, Pena, and Teahen instead.