oldsox

"I'm certainly not the guy the Sox thought they were trading for," .... This quote in today's Trib says it all. I wonder what Kenny's reaction was when he read it this morning. What a misrable trade, and he followed that up with getting rid of Dan Hudson to the DBacks. Kenny is kind of the Josh McDaniel of MLB GM's.

Whenever I hear of a Cuban defector, I'm surprised that the owners never fixed this loophole (for lack of a better word) in the CBA, and forced the foreign nationals to enter through the draft. Still, I hope they get this kid, especially since the Sox gave up their Number One pick in the Dunn signing.

QUOTE (flavum @ Oct 28, 2009 -> 12:26 PM) Maybe Danks plays LF for a year, but I hope he's projecting to be the CF for the future. If things fall into place, I hope the outfield is Mitchell-Danks-Rios in 2012. Don't you think you are jumping the gun a bit on Mitchell? He hasn't done anything yet.

I actually think Nix played over his head offensively in 2009. I remember how overmatched he was in his two shots with the Rockies. 2009 might be as good as it gets for Nix.

Hawpe is or will be clearly on the market, and I'm quite certain the Rockies will be willing to pick up part of his $7.5 MM salary. He will be sitting on the bench next year if he stays. He is not a dreadful fielder as an earlier poster said. He can cover ground adequately and has a way above average arm. I don't know why he tailed off so much in last half of this season, but that will decrease the price for him. It won't take much, and someone will jump on it. Rockies have a solid team, and I don't think they want to keep him around as a 4th or 5th outfielder.

Rockies will probably try to unload Brad Hawpe. Might not offer arb. so he will then be a FA.

Mark's performance the last two months, plus his contract, means no one will take him for what you guys are considering. His trading value is waaay down.

QUOTE (gatnom @ Sep 26, 2009 -> 08:53 PM) While Kenny didn't really "win" the second swisher trade, it was still a good move considering the circumstances. Swisher was not getting along with or listening to the coaches, and he was getting payed a good amount of money to do so. The real thing to criticize is trading for swisher in the first place; Swisher is just not a major league center fielder. Agreed. First Swisher trade was awful; Ryan Sweeney is a solid player who can play CF, and Gio will probably have a long career.

QUOTE (TitoMB345 @ Sep 24, 2009 -> 08:55 AM) Buehrle kind of exploded after his perfect game. I don't recall many (if any) dominating games since then. What the hell happened? exploded or imploded??

He was the PTBNL in the Royce Ring/R. Alomar deal.

Didn't want to start a new thread, so I'll throw it in here... Saw Poreda pitch last night vs the Rockies. He looked awful.

QUOTE (kitekrazy @ Sep 21, 2009 -> 11:05 PM) Of course if look at the other side of the coin. I guess there are no black Cub fans. When all else fails.........draw the race card. Why is it when the N-word is heard, it's assumed the some white person said it? Sounds like a reversed prejudice. Agreed. Bradley has been an angry guy for years. I don't hang out in the right field bleachers at Wrigley, so I don't know what is said or not said out there, but if I had a racist detector, it would probabaly be locked in on Bradley. And, using his three year old's experiences as an excuse is lame. Who makes racial taunts to a three year old? Other three year olds? Parents?

QUOTE (scenario @ Sep 20, 2009 -> 09:44 PM) Other organizations? Yankees and Rockies were the two farm systems ahead of the Sox in wins. I thought the Rockies would be up there. They have a bunch of good prospects.

Bartolo could not get anyone out in either league, plus he was out of shape from the beginning. I never understood his signing, would have preferred Pedro.

That would clear up a lot of space on the 40 man roster. Can't trade Mitchell and Phegley, BTW.

Pardon me for being an old guy too easily offended by new methods of separating money from baseball fans. I'm watching the Sox vs Mariners and Ichiro Suzuki comes up. He had recently experienced a great accomplishment -- nine consecutive years of 200 hits. He is a fabulous player. But when he comes up to bat they shamelessly advertise a miniature bat with an insignia on it that sells for a whopping $129. And it's a limited edition; only 5000 are available (supposedly). Those pieces of trash could not possibly cost more than $10-15 to produce. I presume the proceeds are split between MLB, the Mariners, and the player. Don't they make enough money, do they have to blatently rip off their constituency? How stupid do you have to be to buy this crap? It's another example of dumbing down our country, which includes sports fans. I know the Sox did the same thing after Buehrle's perfect game, and I just shook my head when I saw it advertised. Now the Mariners do the copy cat routine. I can only expect that from now on every single athletic accomplishment will be followed by a similar tasteless rip off. Now, I bet every one of us has bought a T shirt or something similar to celebrate something, whether it was a ball game or trip to the Bahamas, etc. But the overcharge was nominal and not shoved down our throats by a free ad during a ball game. Plus, you could wear it. Probably some folks here at SoxTalk purchased the Buehrle deal, and if I offended you, I apologize in advance. That is not my intention.

Clint Hurdle is available. Carney Langsford is well thought of.

Is Vargus for real?

He threw a shutout yesterday; Now 5-0. Does anybody know if Kenny tried to get Pedro, or was it a matter of choosing Bartolo over Pedro?

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 12, 2009 -> 02:34 PM) I still don't know what the big deal is about getting him one or two starts this season. With the way our season has gone, he'll probably screw up his arm. Why the urge to pitch him once or twice? I guess we're clinging to the hope we can sweep Detroit. Because it will be exciting to watch Peavy pitch, and it gives us some hope in the off season, assuming he pitches well.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 12, 2009 -> 04:08 PM) So, let's say that Rios is traded for a Swisher-esque package. Doesn't that mean that KW acquired a guy for nothing, spent a little bit of money to give him a tryout, then moved him along and turned him in to a couple average prospects? In other words, he would have turned a couple million dollars in to additional system/bullpen depth. That's not the worst move I've ever heard. Balta, you are counting on the perpetuation of thr Greater Fool Theory.

Maybe Kenny was trying to improve out draft position. Just kidding. His acquisition of Rios is another example of the 'Greater Fool' theory in general managerhood. One GM (Toronto) offers him $60 MM for 5 years, making him a Fool. What, would Rios not have accepted if he were offered only $40 MM for 4 years? Was some other Fool forcing the price up, or was Toronto just outsmarted by the agent, which is often case? So the Toronto GM, Fool Number 1, wakes up one day to discover that he was a Fool, so he now needs another Fool to take him off the hook. He speed dials Kenny, and the rest is history. Unfortunately, the Fool Train stopped at Kenny's desk. No other GM is a big enough Fool to take Rios off his hands. The 'Greater Fool' theory was originally created and perfected by real estate syndicators. There is a similarity. Both play with funny money. Real estate syndicators used the public's money, and Kenny uses Jerry's money.

QUOTE (VAfan @ Jul 31, 2009 -> 01:27 PM) Why did KW trade Nick Swisher this offseason and go into the season with DeWayne Wise and Brian Anderson in CF? When Nick hit his tying HR last night, I sat there wondering about this move. The fact that Wise came through with a single to win the game doesn't change this calculus. Nick Swisher has produced 56.2 runs created this season in 371 plate appearances. DeWayne Wise has produced 7.1 runs created in 112 PAs. Brian Anderson produced 17.7 runs created 205 PAs. The difference is that Swisher has 27.4 more runs created. Since he has 54 more PAs, we'll discount the difference to 25 runs. If you plug that into the pythagorean expected win totals, you'll see that the Tigers are +31 runs, while we are at zero. So, had we kept Nick Swisher, we could easily be tied with the Tigers at this point -- or ahead of them if Swisher had helped us beat the Tigers even one time. Meanwhile, KW ends up trading for Mark Kotsay to fill the same kind of role Swisher fills, yet he's several years older and dramatically less productive. So unproductive offensively, in fact, that I'm not sure he's much better than Brian Anderson at this point. Swisher would have given us a major league player in CF from the start of the year. He could have kept that job when Scotty Pods came over because Quentin went down. And now he would still be a super-sub for Quentin, Pods, Dye, Konerko, and Thome, giving him plenty of ABs that will go instead to less productive hitters for the Sox. I realize KW and Ozzie wanted to dump Swisher after last season. But it was a dumb move without getting someone to replace his role. That one position has been the weakest on the team, and has certainly cost us games, and very possibly another division title. I think the better question is why did we trade FOR Swisher? We gave up a great prospect in Sweeney, who can play CF and hit. He's around .280 now and is bound to improve; plus a promising lefty in Gio.

The Rockies did it two years ago. They won their last 14-15 games or so, tied San Diego, beat Peavy in a one game playoff, went the the WS.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 10, 2009 -> 03:04 PM) I do agree that part of it is probably mental. At least part, maybe most or all. It's half physical and 90% mental.