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QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Nov 5, 2010 -> 09:32 PM) I'd rather have Morel playing than 3B than Vizquel. They both offer great defense (although I'd given Morel the nod given his strong arm), and they are both "meh" offensively. However, I'd rather let the young guy play everyday and bat everyday to get better than the 44 year old player who is more useful to use plugging in at multiple other positions. "meh" is one way of putting it.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Nov 4, 2010 -> 12:39 AM) That's what I was thinking. I don't think we want Omar playing 100 or more games. And I do think we overpaid him, don't you? Unless half the salary is going for his coaching ability of our young infielders. I don't think we particularly overpaid him, though it could be an issue paying somewhat of a premium for a role player when we have so little to spend. The Sox as an organization seem to be very fair if not unfair to themselves when they deal with contracts or trades. I always get the feeling that they try to give what they believe to be fair market value instead of actually trying to "win" the deal/contract.

QUOTE (bucket-of-suck @ Nov 3, 2010 -> 08:29 PM) Unless something unforseen happens (trade, injury) all signs point to Morel as the opening day 3B. As well they should. He's gonna be a good one. He may be in the long run, but I feel like he's going to struggle quite a bit coming out of the gates. There's a pretty substantial jump between minor league pitching and major league pitching.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 3, 2010 -> 02:15 PM) The history is a bit revisionist when it comes to Omar. The guy really didn't play much in the first part of the season, until Mark Teahen got hurt, you didn't see him much at all. He had 22 Abs in April and 28 in May. That is like an AB a game pretty much, or less than 200 ABs a season. Teahen went on the DL May 31st. I think it's going to be hard for Ozzie not to give him the Mark Kotsay treatment when Morel (as he seems to be the plan at third) starts struggling.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 31, 2010 -> 11:57 AM) On principle, I actually kind of like the concept here...because it's basically tantamount to "Retrying the 2010 lineup without pretending that we don't need run production from the DH spot". If you believe, like I do, that we were at least ok in overall offense despite having Beckham, Quentin, and AJ underperforming, Konerko basically being the only starter who you can legitimately say totally overperformed, and the DH position being an absolute joke...fixing that problem and just allowing for regression to normal performance should put together a solid O. However...there's a couple flaws. First, KW isn't going to just replay the season. That's just not his style. Second, there's plenty of reason to expect that Konerko (and/or Rios) won't repeat their 2010 performance, so that's stuff you have to make up. Third...we really got strong bench performance last year out of Jones and Castro, which isn't likely to be repeated. And most importantly...the key guy we'd hope to improve, Carlos, is still as big of a question mark as you can get. He also can't because he has too much money committed to too few players next season. I would agree that we would be in a great position for next year if we didn't need to replace our starting first baseman, catcher, designated hitter, closer, primary right-handed set up man, potentially our third baseman, the bench, and any remaining bullpen spots with about $15 million. The only place with any semblance of depth right now is our starting rotation, and if you actually want to get value back in a trade you need to trade Danks or Floyd. Peavy and Buehrle would be straight salary dumps, and Jackson would get you less in a trade now than what you gave up for him. I'm not saying that it's impossible to field a good team next year. It's just going to be very hard to actually improve upon our roster with so little to work with in terms of money and valuable prospects. Let's hope KW can break his slump.

QUOTE (The Baconator @ Oct 28, 2010 -> 07:31 PM) Why has the talk about Adrian Gonzalez died off for us now? I know the Padres got off to a hot start so we knew we wouldn't get him early but it still looks like he could be had this off-season by a number of teams. I know there was the issue with FA coming up ( after '11, right?), but isn't that the same case for Fielder? If they are in the same boat in terms of years remaining, I would much rather have Adrian due to both his defensive and offensive capabilities. Is there a reason we're not mentioned in his rumors now? Without even thinking about whether or not the Padres want to trade him, what do we have that they (or the Brewers for that matter) would want in a trade? The only players with value we have are expensive, so it doesn't really make sense for us to acquire either Gonzalez or Fielder because the sole reason they wish to trade them is that they won't be able to afford them for much longer.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 26, 2010 -> 07:16 AM) If you think Swisher had a lot of value but was traded when he had none, how can you not say the same thing about Quentin? Well, I guess we could trade him for the sake of trading him and get nothing in return like Swisher. I don't know why you would, though.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 25, 2010 -> 06:41 PM) No what I was saying is if you think Carlos Quentin played well for 3 weeks and has no value, you should have felt the same way about Nick Swisher, and should never complain some team took his entire contract, even if they gave you garbage in return. With the Sox, Swisher was good for about 3 weeks and hit below .200 tne rest of the time. Well, that's the kind of risk you take when trading a guy when his value is at its lowest. He might end up doing what you once thought he could. I did think Swisher had a low value, and that coupled with the fact that he had an unlucky season made me think it was a bad idea to trade him, even with his contract. Swisher obviously forced KW's hand in trading him by not fitting in well in the clubhouse, but I think most people's beef with that trade lies in the fact that we gave up quite a bit of value for a very poor return, Swishers' 2008 season, while going on to actually make that poor return worse by trading him to the Yankees. Individually, the trades aren't all that bad all things considered, but when you put them together they are ugly. Not entirely sure what this has to do with Carlos Quentin or Adam Dunn, though.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 25, 2010 -> 03:48 PM) Dunn generally is superior. I'm just pointing out the worthless, horrible, must be dumped for any price Carlos Quentin has value. Sort of like Konerko last year. Cherry picking numbers is fine, I just wish the people doing the cherry picking are consistent. If you or they were, you would never mention again the Nick Swisher trade as looking at his 2008 season, except for 2 or 3 weeks, he makes the numbers being dubbed for Quentin MVP-like. I think the point is that the potential that Quentin has to play similarly to how he did in 2008 is worth more to us than to any other team, and if he has yet another mediocre or oft-injured season, his value will be less than what he will be paid. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by your last sentence, but I really hope you aren't trying to say that since we traded away Nick Swisher he had value because we pretty much got nothing out of that trade.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 20, 2010 -> 07:29 PM) Honestly if you read that far into it, there isn't really much to discuss, because you are going to read what you want to out of it anyway. Well, if you throw out sentences with apparently no meaning other than to contradict those with "chronic negativity," I can definitely agree with you on that.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 20, 2010 -> 12:50 PM) So where did I say that it did? Well, how did you want me to interpret this: QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 20, 2010 -> 08:11 AM) Not really. We have a team full of ground ball pitchers. The difference in this team between Vizquel and Teahen was night and day. In the context of our argument, I assumed you meant that Vizquel's superior defense is what made this team start winning. If you meant something else, please do clarify.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 20, 2010 -> 08:11 AM) Not really. We have a team full of ground ball pitchers. The difference in this team between Vizquel and Teahen was night and day. Because the only reason we won all those games in a row was Vizquel, nothing else.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 19, 2010 -> 05:51 PM) It still neglects the fact that Morel is already a plus defender at 3B for a team that thrives when it gets good defense. I think we both know it's more complicated than that.

I think some people are going to be disappointed if/when Morel starts playing in the majors for us.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 19, 2010 -> 02:10 PM) A prospect who is the exact opposite of Escobar in almost every way says hi? Just saying we shouldn't jump to conclusions based on small sample sizes in the AFL, especially the offensive numbers.

QUOTE (bucket-of-suck @ Oct 19, 2010 -> 11:26 AM) Right now he's a kid who just homered and went 3-for-4 with a stolen base and two runs scored against among the best AA competition out there. C.J. Retherford says hi.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Oct 16, 2010 -> 02:47 AM) For the record I agree with this post 100 percent. For the life of me I couldn't understand why Juan never had a day off? Oz loves to give guys days off. WTF? Great great post. He actually had 2 days off, but Juan is the kind of guy who doesn't like to sit. He played in every single game from 2003-2007, and he even averages 162 games a year for his career. I really dislike his game, but it's hard not to like his attitude. Also, people may look at his .341 OBP and say he had a decent year, but this was also inflated by being hit a little more than twice as much as he ever had before in his career. If you use his average number of hit by pitches (9) instead of the 21 he had this season, his OBP is just barely .330, which coupled with his slugging percentage puts him at an OPS of 646. Juan Pierre is not a good baseball player, and a terrible fit for our stadium.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 14, 2010 -> 03:59 PM) For whatever reason the Sox werent confident in Hudson's ability. Wait, strike that. For whatever reason most of MLB was not confident in Hudson's ability. If other teams thought Hudson was as good as he performed post trade, dont you think teams would have been busting down Kenny's door for the guy? Dont you imagine that the Nationals would have been willing to trade Dunn for him? Im not going to fault Kenny & Co. for this one. Strange things happen after trades. I know this is going to come off a little harsh, but do you plan on backing up any of these claims? How do you know what the rest of the league thought of him? How do you know the nationals wouldn't have wanted him in a deal for Dunn? Couldn't it be possible that the Diamondbacks just didn't like our prospects, but KW wanted his guy so he sold low anyways? He isn't infallible. Also, Hudson doesn't need to be as good as he was this season to tremendously outvalue Jackson. A dirt cheap middle of the rotation starter has quite a bit of value.

QUOTE (T R U @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 08:48 PM) it doesn't matter those raises aren't going to completely take over all that money that comes off the books.. KW will not let AJ, Konerko, and Jenks go and not do something with that money.. its just not going to happen.. especially when you consider they have been crying poor for years and you still see acquisitions like Rios (his ENTIRE contract).. Manny.. they were interested in Damon.. Don't believe anything they say about not having money, they will do something because they do every year even when they say they don't have the money.. They will have about $85 million locked up for next year presuming they keep Danks, Quentin, and Pena. That's without having a closer, primary right-handed set up man, starting first baseman, starting catcher, fifth starter, bench, or remaining bullpen spots. To put that in perspective, our opening day payroll was just under $100 million last year when you take into account the money we got for Teahen and Pierre.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 11, 2010 -> 02:24 PM) The irony is that an argument like this is always going on at Soxtalk. One year his name is Kip Wells, another it is Chris Young, and another it is Brandon Allen. As time goes by, it always seems to come up Kenny. In my opinion, the Hudson trade is different than those because it set in motion the necessity of trading one of Danks or Floyd in the off season because we have just about no money to spend anymore. All of our decent prospects have diminished value due to injuries or poor seasons, which means we have to trade something from our major league roster to get value back, and the only place on our major league roster where we have some semblance of depth is our starting pitching. You aren't getting much of anything for Buehrle because of his contract, and it might be bad to trade him if you decide Konerko and AJ aren't worth what they want to be paid. Nobody will trade for Peavy because of the combination of his contract, injuries, and performance. If we try to trade Jackson himself, we aren't going to get back as much as we gave up to the Diamondbacks, which defeats the whole purpose of trading him in the first place. We can't trade Sale yet. That leaves one of Floyd or Danks that has to go.

QUOTE (bucket-of-suck @ Oct 9, 2010 -> 08:55 PM) Still the division's best rotation: Peavy Buehrle Jackson Floyd Sale or until Peavy is ready: Buehrle Jackson Floyd Garcia Sale Then move Sale into the bullpen when Jake comes back. Danks is a very nice trade chip that is gonna want big money soon. He could win 18-20 games in the NL and would return a stud player in a deal. I'm not saying that Sale can't handle the fifth spot (I think he will do it well next year), but it can be kind of risky to just throw a guy for all intents and purposes straight to the majors, not to mention we have zero depth after him in the minors in case Peavy gets another "freak" injury this year. Also, you realize Freddy isn't under team control, and it would probably be best to not spend a few million on him and instead just keep Danks?

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Oct 9, 2010 -> 06:43 PM) Which is hard for me to understand. We've been to the playoffs 5 times in the last 27 years and yet this organization/fan base feel we're above and beyond a rebuild, or even a semi-rebuild. All I know is I've had it with these empty 2nd/3rd place finishes. Who cares. The Twins get destroyed in the playoffs every year by the Yankees

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Oct 7, 2010 -> 10:43 AM) 3-17 in their last 20 playoff games What does that say about us, the team they continually beat the s*** out of?

QUOTE (nitetrain8601 @ Oct 5, 2010 -> 08:00 PM) I'll laugh if Hudson ends up like all the other great cheap prospects of the Sox such as Reed and McCarthy. I've never seen a guy so overvalued in my life. I get the feeling that people would take "6 cheap years of Dan Hudson" over 2 years of Doc Halladay because he was cheaper. And Rick Hahn, while seemingly a nice fellow, is overrated on this board as well. When there are 25 players on a roster, not every one can be paid $20 million.

QUOTE (justBLAZE @ Oct 5, 2010 -> 04:57 PM) Let's see what happens next year (Jackon vs Hudson) but my point was, this trade is dead and done, and has nothing to do with Rick Hahn, let's stick with the subject, that's all. More like the next 6 years. I agree with your overall point, though.