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QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Oct 3, 2010 -> 04:50 PM) No playoff baseball for the 4th time in the last 5 years since '05. I'm disappointed. The end.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 3, 2010 -> 12:48 PM) Sadly that ship has sailed. Ozzie would just bench him to prove he wasn't wrong. Thome might well get a ring this year and call it quits anyway. I bet he at least comes back to get 600 in a Twins uniform.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Sep 29, 2010 -> 11:04 PM) It's possible a starter could be dealt, but I see it happening only in the perfect scenario. Money definitely needs to be freed up, but I don't know how they will go about it exactly Seeing as we are going to have about $50 million dollars invested into our starting rotation (out of about $85 million total going into the off season), I don't see how you could free it up from anywhere else.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 21, 2010 -> 07:19 PM) Yes. Fire Herm Schneider.

Basically reposting what I said in the Daniel Hudson thread a few days ago: unlike NorthSideSox, I really do not like how this team is positioned for 2011. By my conservative estimate (Kalapse or somebody else more familiar with contracts around the league could give a more accurate one), we have roughly $85 million invested in 14 players, and those 14 players do not include our first baseman (and best offensive player for that matter), catcher, designated hitter, closer, right handed set up man, any of the bench, or any of the remaining spots in the pen. Our payroll this year was $99.575 million, and it will likely continue to drop, as it has been, with our ticket sales being even lower than they were last year. This means that we will likely have to unload salary, and the best place to do that is the starting rotation since that is where we have the majority of it tied up. There are a couple problems with this. One, Buehrle and Peavy are pretty much untradeable. Two, if you trade one of Danks or Floyd in order to actually receive value in return, you now have to assume Peavy will not only be 100% healthy for the year but also not underperform like he did in 2010, and you also have to rely on a rookie pitcher without even a full season of professional baseball under his belt. You also have to hope that Edwin Jackson pitches closer to the 3.25 era that he has with the Sox than the 4.65 he has pitched over his career. And, if any of these conditions don't work out, we don't have any pitching prospects anywhere near the majors who can fill a spot in the rotation. KW is definitely going to have to get creative this year, should be an interesting offseason.

Including Jackson, we are going to have about $85 million locked up without signing/re-signing a first baseman, catcher, designated hitter, righty set-up man, closer, second lefty, or bench players. So yeah, I'd say it was a bad trade, even without the hindsight of being able to see how far back of the Twins we will fall. Our payroll for 2010 was $99.575 million when you take into account the money we received from other clubs, and it will probably continue to fall as it has been. So, by my estimate we need to fill 5 crucial spots (one of which was our best offensive player) along with 5 or so negligible spots with $15 million, and in order to do that KW is probably going to have to trade Danks or Floyd while giving Chris Sale that final spot in the rotation (something that he wouldn't give Dan Hudson) since we have pretty much no other starting pitching near the majors. All in all, that's why I'm not too optimistic about next year. I think a lot of people get wrapped up in how we will nearly win 90 games even with Peavy hurt, a nonexistent team the first month or two, etc. while completely forgetting that the Twins basically lost their equivalent of Paul Konerko and Matt Thornton for the vast majority of the season and will STILL nearly win 100 games if they stay at their current pace. I'm not going to say we won't compete with Twins, but these realities are definitely keeping my optimism in check.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Sep 17, 2010 -> 10:53 PM) Shouldn't it be the opposite? We should be more upset the Twins haven't advanced very far or done well in the playoffs, because that makes our own losses to them during the regular season look even worse? If they were a great team, then it would be a stronger argument supporting either the players, Guillen or KW. I mean, I get the bigger point...it's almost impossible for me to root for them. Appreciate them, fine. Then again, I'm SO tired of this argument about the Twins' lack of playoff success and only beating the A's that I'd rather they at least made it to the World Series and then lost so it would be 100%, patently/clearly obvious we needed to step up our efforts to compete with them instead of this 85-90 win goal and "fixing things at the Break" idea which hasn't worked well at all the last two years. I 100% agree with this.

QUOTE (CWSOX45 @ Sep 13, 2010 -> 09:53 PM) I never said Jim Thome's season had NO EFFECT on the Minnesota Twins' success this season. You people make it sound like Jim Thome is the only person that plays for the Minnesota Twins. You're right, Thome is the Twins pulse when it comes to power, but he's not the ONLY reason for their success against Central Division foes. In terms of offense, there are 5 other starting players that had a batting average above .300 against the AL Central, an OBP above .350, and three of those players had OPS above .800. Again let me clarify, Jim Thome is a huge reason for their success, but it's not like the rest of the Twins have not been hitting. Delmon Young: .300/.340/.450 Joe Mauer: .380/.430/.530 Orlando Hudson: .310/.320/.490 Danny Valencia: .340/.380/.470 Michael Cuddyer: .310/.360/.430 Believe me, if it were up to me I would have brought Jim Thome back. All I'm trying to say is that he's NOT the sole reason we are down 6 games in the division. The bottom line is Thome or no Thome, the Twins are a better team than us. Even if WE had Jim Thome, I still think the Twins are the better team. It's just that simple. I don't think anybody really thinks Thome is the only player on the Twins. Subtracting Thome from them and adding him to the Sox at worst puts us back in the race for this division instead of holding onto a thread of hope because we haven't been mathematically eliminated yet. As far as I can tell, that's all anybody is trying to say. Whether or not you agree with WAR exactly on the number of wins he would add/subtract is pretty much irrelevant because even a minor number (1-2 games for each team) puts us right back in the race, and if we're in the race, I don't see how you can say the Twins are definitely the better team. You can't just cherry-pick hitting stats against the division and say they are the better team. It's a lot more complicated than that. With that being said, this is going to be my last post on Big Jim. I wouldn't be surprised if half my posts on this site were about him, and this horse is obviously well past beaten to death.

QUOTE (CWSOX45 @ Sep 13, 2010 -> 05:23 PM) The bottom line is that sabermetrics don't always translate and carry over to reality, and specifically in this instance they're just hypothetical explanations on what could have been. All of them have their flaws, UZR, WAR, etc. and shouldn't always be "the final answer." All you're arguing here is that WAR wouldn't exactly represent Thome's value to the Sox, which could mean that Thome himself could be worth EITHER more or less than what the numbers suggest. You don't have to trust the numbers, but if you factor in the addition by subtraction from the Twins, I can see this division being close enough that not signing him would actually be the difference between winning and not winning the division. Then you would see the inevitable responses about how the team sucked to start out and how X/Y/Z let us down, and all of them are valid reasons for why the Sox didn't end up winning the division. However, you can't control who is going to have a down year or who will get injured like you can control adequately filling positions on your roster. Thome was willing to play for less than Mark Kotsay, and they took a large risk (potentially having the worst every day player at a position) for a small reward (looking smart for not wasting a whole $1 million on a player who finally declined too far).

QUOTE (Leonard Zelig @ Sep 12, 2010 -> 12:56 PM) I'm not going to drag this out into a long argument, but I think Thome is the easy excuse and it ignores the fact that 2 of our starters were the worst in the league for 1/3 of the season, 1/3 of our lineup was horrible to start the season, and that our bullpen has cost us plenty of games. I'm not saying that the offense would not have been better with Thome, but he wouldn't have prevented what I believe the main deficiencies of this season were. The Sox could have won this division without him and I think there are several other people to blame for our position before the people who chose not to resign him. Sure, they could have won this division without him, but they didn't because of the reasons you mentioned and then some. If the Sox resigned Thome, he would probably add a couple wins over the course of the season. Taking him away from the twins probably takes away a couple wins from them. That puts the Sox at two games back and still in the race instead of six games back and looking forward to golfing with Hawk in the offseason.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Sep 7, 2010 -> 04:42 PM) Soriano probably wouldve helped us win a few more games in 2006, but that doesn't mean he was worth giving Brandon McCarthy up for. Overpaying for a player is just that, it doesn't matter what that player does afterwards, because at the time of the trade you paid too much. It's a philosophy that will hurt you longterm. While I agree that it was a bad trade, I think you're missing the angle that getting that one player who puts you over the top to get you into the playoffs could end up actually benefiting you in the long run. Based on an article somebody posted on this site awhile back, the revenue added is somewhat negligible unless you end up winning the world series (though I'm not sure how it would affect ticket sales etc. for next year's team... I would suspect that it would affect it little, but I'm not sure). It's the kind of move a GM like Kenny makes and is usually praised for.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 7, 2010 -> 08:40 AM) That actually is a good point. Even if Thome came back, you still had to have Kotsay on the roster, because you need someone who can play 1B. You also still had to have Andruw on the team, because you need someone who can play CF. Thome on the team would have most likely meant no Santos. Did we need Randy Williams?

QUOTE (kitekrazy @ Sep 7, 2010 -> 12:26 AM) Oh no, there goes someone throwing logic around here. Looks more like a straw man and getting off topic to me.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Sep 2, 2010 -> 11:29 PM) OMG the Tigers suck so bad! They took the lead in the top of the 11th inning. Then in the bottom of the 11th it is 1st and 2nd with 0 outs. Joe Mauer strikes out. 1 out. Then it's a DP ball to Inge. He bobbles the ball, tries to throw to 2nd, and it's a bad throw, the runners are all safe. So now it's bases loaded with 1 out. Next batter hits a perfect DP ball to 2B. Rhymes gets the ball, tries to go to 2B, but Santiago is standing on the base, blocking him. So he runs into Santiago, they fall down, and he barely gets the out at 2B, but the tying run scores. Blown save, and 9-9. Then the next batter hits a grounder to 2B and he makes the out thank god. Tigers are so terrrible. 2 perfect DP balls that could have ended the game, and they messed up BOTH of them. Now it's the top of the 12th. f***ING s***HEADS! Maybe it's all part of their plan to tax the Twins' bullpen. Maybe not.

I actually worked full time this summer, and I felt it wasn't all that bad compared to school. Working 40+ hours a week really does kill your free time, but so does doing homework, studying, and working a part time job. I can't really speak for the whole responsibilities thing, though. As far as my schedule for the semester: ANTH 103 - Anthropology in a Changing World MATH 231 - Calculus 2 PHYS 211 - Physics: Mechanics CS 225 - Data Structures CS 231 - Computer Architecture 1

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 11:37 AM) and the server here crashing It's like the whole world... stopped.

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 11:11 AM) Is anyone else really getting tired of Hawk as of late? He can't judge the distance of a fly ball at all anymore. Every semi-deep fly ball, he's yelling "stretch, stretch" and then "dagummit". Last night, he was talking so highly of Mauer you'd have thought he was his son. Every time there's a chance that a double play may get broken up and it doesn't he's grouching "dagummit". How did he react to Thome's HR last night? All I can remember is about 30 seconds of silence while the crowd erupted.

QUOTE (Cali @ Jul 31, 2010 -> 08:01 PM) That's a reason to keep Jones and DFA Kotsay, he make swing and miss, but if he can make contact it can go into the seats, something that Kotsay seems to not have the ability to do anymore... The tank is swinging too hot a bat right now to be sent down, Lilli has speed so he's great for pinch running, Jones has the defensive substitution factor, and what does Kotsay have? He's a lefty...Guess what? So is Teahen.... This is the same group of guys that decided that Kotsay was more valuable to the club than Thome (sorry Kyyle). I would not be surprised at all if they saw something in him that no other human being on the planet does.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jul 31, 2010 -> 03:35 PM) Its over and done with. Crying about it doesnt change it. It would be nice, yes. Ok, it has been said. let it go Should we do this with the good moves too?

QUOTE (AWhiteSoxinNJ @ Jul 31, 2010 -> 03:24 PM) Do you understand how waivers works? Most likely it will be for a PTBNL with prospects going later on. You realize everybody with a worse record gets the first shot at these waiver guys correct? As well as most of them being garbage of course.

QUOTE (AWhiteSoxinNJ @ Jul 31, 2010 -> 03:17 PM) When will people understand that money isn't an issue. Every time someone complains about money, the White Sox add more payroll. Because it is in issue when you're not the New York Yankees. The Sox had a TON of money coming off the books when they acquired Peavy and Rios. Don't even try to pretend like this is a similar situation. Maybe KW's plan is to have Coop fix him and then turn around and deal him to fill in holes next season, I don't know. But, money is very much so an issue. And if all these bats could be had cheaply, why didn't KW get them?

QUOTE (Dan Pasqua's Forearms @ Jul 29, 2010 -> 05:15 PM) 1. Who do you think will do a better job? 2. How will you get them here? I honestly think Ozzie and Kenny are one of the best GM/Field Manager combos in baseball today. If you got rid of them who do you honestly think would come in here and do a BETTER job? As Sox fans, we would kill to have a GM like KW if he were elsewhere, but since he's here, it's ok to trash the guy. Sure he's made some bad deals in the past, but name me a GM who hasn't. I can honestly say that every year, Kenny ALWAYS will try to get something done to make our club better. Keep in mind we don't have the Yankees, Red Sox, or even the Cubs payroll. Just imagine if he did! Without KW, we wouldn't have the starting staff we have, nor this bullpen. Think about all the crappy prospects we gave up to get what we have now! He's cleary one of the Top 5 in all of baseball. As for Ozzie. Sure he has his moments, but he's honest with his players and he'll give them every opportunity to succeed. He also protects his players when everyone else is after their heads. Yes he makes his mistakes as well, but I think overall he has a great feel for this staff. He told us that Alexi could be one of the better shortstops in the game and you know what, he was right! I wanted Beckham back at short, but this is why he's a winning manager and i'm just a Sox fan posting silly comments. Don't forget, he got us something we hadn't had in 88 years... A world series ring! At the end of the day.. sure they both can become such drama queens, but I honestly think they deserve tons of credit for trying to put a competitve team together year in and year out. We just don't have the mega-payroll like other big market teams. I hope they stay a long while! I don't specifically know who would do a better job than Kenny, and I do feel like he is one of the better GMs in the game. However, it feels to me like a lot of people choose to ignore all of his shortcomings and mistakes he's made over the years. I don't expect perfection or anything, but he has neglected the farm system so much he hardly has any pieces to even acquire something to improve his team, let alone being able to replace those pieces on next year's team. And, let's not forget that had he not completely botched a huge no-brainer to resign Thome, he could be looking into improving in his 4/5th starter instead of trying to pick up a bat. That being said, I would still like KW to be our GM. You can't ignore the things he doesn't do well and say that we are better off not trying to fix our flaws. As for Ozzie, I want him gone. He can't be counted on to make good calls, and that's pretty much all you can say about it.

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Jul 28, 2010 -> 12:54 AM) Unless my counting was wrong, it looks to me that we could skip the 5th starter without pitching anyone on short rest enough times that a 5th starter needs to make 9 more starts. One of those would be the final game of the season, so I will subtract that one (if we still had not clinched the division going into the final game, someone would go on short rest or multiple starters would be available in the bullpen). So let's say we need 8 starts from a 5th starter the rest of the year (assuming our others stay healthy). What is the difference between Hudson and Torres/Marquez in those 8 starts? How many of those 8 do we expect to win with Hudson vs. the others? I probably should have noted who the starts are against. I'm not certain how good Hudson will be the rest of this season, but I will say starting Torres/Marquez 8 times would be conceding those 8 games. Despite his struggles out of the gate, I think Hudson will be more good than bad over the course of this season. Somebody else in this thread mentioned we should get a cheap vet to fill Hudson's spot, and I just want to point out that you would be paying about 10 times the price for similar to worse production of Hudson next season. There's a reason the whole Dunn deal hasn't been done yet, and that's that not only does KW have to create holes to fill holes but he also has to sacrifice a lot of flexibility in constructing next year's roster. If everybody got their wish of getting both Dunn and a pitcher to fill Hudson's spot, KW would have to work some serious magic in the off season to field a seriously competitive team, that is a team who can do more than just compete in a lousy division. Also, I feel that a lot of people are seriously overvaluing Morel. I mean this is a guy whose ceiling is pretty much that of an average third baseman, all things considered. Just because he's high on our top prospect list doesn't mean he's some star in the waiting.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jul 26, 2010 -> 09:41 PM) Sixth sellout of the season. Beautiful weather, nice response to a first place team...Monday night, Felix Hernandez was on the mound, but the Mariners aren't exactly a huge draw these days, and the White Sox haven't been playing very well since the ASB. Seems like it takes until late July or early August for many White Sox fans to start believing in their team...then they disappear again when school hits a month from now. One thing is for sure, these sellouts make it a lot more likely we could afford to bring back Konerko or AJ (one of the two) next year if KW wants to go in that direction...also dependent, of course, on what changes, if any, KW makes before the end of the season. It was half price night.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 26, 2010 -> 08:29 AM) We've already decided that Flowers and Danks are backups? A bit premature I think. I agree on Martinez over Gartrell, but there are still big question marks with Martinez, and he needs to continue development. He missed a lot of time. Doyle was discussed, people are aware of him, and he's definitely worth watching. I think that's the direction Danks is heading, but I've never really been a huge supporter of his either.