The Ultimate Champion

Caulfield is a great poster. He should have his own forum IMO. People probably don't care enough to post in the gamethreads since they have no interest in following the games at any level. Once some kids get up here there should be more action.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 30, 2013 -> 04:50 AM) http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20...ws&c_id=cws Pretty amazing story...and to think, he actually was withholding his full arsenal for fear of hitting someone, hadn't pitched in 8 years at all of a mound and was using moving two-seamers instead of a four-seamer. Legitimately, he could have throwing 94-95-96-97 out there, it seems, albeit straight. It's like something out of THE ROOKIE with Dennis Quaid (Jim Morris story). Hawk always says that one of the reasons he likes the NL style of play without the DH better is that pitchers get to see what it is like to face MLB pitching, which teaches them how hard it is to hit & helps them trust their stuff more.

The Sox definitely need to talk to him about this because being a bench player on a s*** team isn't helping his career. He could be logging minor league innings right now. The Sox would have to straight release him IIRC & then sign him to a MiLB contract in order to get him down there and work on things as a pitcher. Given our success rate with pitchers & our coaching staff, he should be willing to go through that process with us if he decides on that course of action. I still wish that a given organization could buy an extra option year or two on a player to negate the lengthy release/resigning process. If you try to convert a player like Casper at the MLB level then you have to work hard to get him innings & you just get him closer to arbitration in the process.

So Robin sat Viciedo down to discipline him. What is SoxTalk's view of that? My guess it's either 1) the seat was too comfortable & Ozzie would have made him sit on pins or on the floor in everyone else's spit, 2) Robin, who has mentally checked out, forgot to put him in the lineup & made the discipline part up later to cover for himself , 3) WHY THE f*** DO YOU SIT THE PLAYERS YOU NEED TO DEVELOP MOST?!?!?!

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 29, 2013 -> 06:36 PM) Or he can join our covert, black op CIA operations centers in Nicaragua or Colombia. lol you're an asshole sometimes

What about Danks + Rios for pitching prospects? Getting Danks off the books would be nice. The Giants seem to do well with diminished starters, if in fact Danks never returns to where he was. Then you look for position players with the other guys.

Well one positive in our favor is that when you consider our ass-backwards organizational philosophy of not trying to fix anything until a player is failing miserably at the MLB level, in the cases of those guys we have them all right where we want 'em.

For a UT man that contract is definitely not puny, and no team looking for long-term future pieces should ever commit enough playing time to a vet UT guy as to justify that kind of contract. Getting his contract off the books is a big plus if we can do it. And that "garbage" return is a pretty nice return if you ask me. I wish we could get that kind of value back for Dunn.

Per MLBTR Any chance we could change the title of this thread to "Peavy trade rumors" or something & just use this as a catch-all for Peavy rumors until something close occurs? Just because, with the extra wild card spot, like every team out there is going to produce a Peavy rumor at some point here.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 29, 2013 -> 02:08 PM) Giants are also looking for a RH hitting outfielder, so Rios could be a perfect fit there. But packaging Rios and Peavy doesn't make so much sense, as what do the Giants have to give up? Still, Brandon Belt would be a good "buy low" candidate in the Justin Smoak/Hosmer mode. You'd also have to make sure that Konerko wanted to finish the season on a contender before you made that deal. The Mariners have so many busts in need of a change of scenery, and we have so many holes, that there just has to be a fit somewhere. Could they/would they use DeAza anywhere?

QUOTE (Noonskadoodle @ Jun 29, 2013 -> 01:58 PM) Then the Giants are def not the right partner. I still kind of like to try to abide by the rule that if you trade pitching you have to get pitching in return. A really nice RHSP prospect who is pretty close should be a target in a Peavy deal, but that alone isn't enough, so maybe you target a position player of similar value (maybe involving a 3rd team). If that isn't an option then maybe you look to their low minors, take back 3-4 guys depending on quality. There's always the risk you get a Jon Gilmore type, who maybe is a former 1st rounder that you like & was on your draft board, but in the end he can never hit enough to justify a promotion out of A ball. In a Peavy deal IMO it's pretty freaking unlikely that you are going to get a player who will ever be is as good as Peavy is right now, and it's almost asinine/borderline nutty to expect a player back who when it is all said and done will have a career that will match up with the Jakemeister's, and so you either need MLB-ready guys or prospects that are really really close who have done just about everything they can do in the minors or else some combination of MLB-ready/near MLB-ready talent plus a ton of potential. There are lots of guys out there (John Shelby III is a perfect example of this) who seem to have the raw talent, the acumen, the lineage, the smarts, etc. who you just think will at least make it to the bigs, but yet they still flame out in AA or below.

Here is a good comp, the Tex trade: July 31, 2007: Traded by the Texas Rangers with Ron Mahay to the Atlanta Braves for Beau Jones (minors), Elvis Andrus, Neftali Feliz, Matt Harrison and Jarrod Saltalamacchia. Sale is more of a difference maker than Tex was even then. Sale also has multiple years on his contract, whereas Tex had 1.5 seasons left. At the time of the deal it was looking like the last year that Bobby Cox & Schuerholtz were going to spend together and they wanted to win. At the time the Braves felt they were probably going to lose that deal on the talent end, and maybe it would end up a major mistake. If you deal Chris Sale you need to have the team dealing for him feeling exactly the same way about that deal as the Braves did when they pulled the trigger on the Teixeira deal. That's the kind of return you need. The Latos deal is like the worth of half of one of Sale's massive 32 testicles. If I'm Hahn & someone proposes that deal to me I send Samuel L Jackson to go visit him in his apartment & have him question that guy why he happens to think I'm a b****. Edit: BTW I can't make a post without at least one glaring typo. Here I was going to edit this to change the quantity of Sale's testicles from "32" to "2" but thinking about it, I'm just going to leave this typo, it's far more accurate. Chris Sale has at least 32 testicles IMO.

Derrrrr, you think? Profar + Martin + Grimm + Olt + Beltre + Perez + whoever this board would consider the Rangers best prospect. They get Sale + DeAza back. I'd do that deal, but that's what it would take. Not a post-suspension Edinson Volquez and whatever. Sale is on another level.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Jun 29, 2013 -> 11:22 AM) I doubt many players have been converted to pitchers at the major league level. Yeah but we're playing at the minor league level anyway.

Agree. In that gif though he does look pretty vulnerable to a smash back up the middle. Might need to protect himself better. Nice breaking ball though, I didn't see it but if he can throw the FB with good movement at that velocity then he does have that option realistically. It would be pretty cool also to have a reliever you could use as a defensive replacement in the OF late in the game, then put him on the mound the following inning after warming up in the pen while the Sox are making 3 outs. Not that it would ever happen but it would be cool to see.

Do they have any exciting young RHSP there? IIRC they don't seem to have much positionally at least as far as what is put out there, but they always seem to have some pitching. Maybe if you have to you can get a third team involved where we get a RHSP prospect from the Giants & a SS/CF/run producer from someone else. We need guys who are close though. We need lots back to move Peavy.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Jun 29, 2013 -> 10:03 AM) Listening is a waste of time and resources at that point. YES!

QUOTE (gosox41 @ Jun 29, 2013 -> 02:58 AM) I think there is a simple explanation for that. Bob I agree wholeheartedly. "Bob" is always the best explanation for everything. Why is the sky blue? Bob Why does the sun rise in the East? Bob Why do the baby seals have to be eaten? Why can't someone come and save them, protect them until they're big enough to fend for themselves? Bob

QUOTE (flavum @ Jun 29, 2013 -> 09:51 AM) If the Sox are flat-out saying Chris Sale is untouchable and don't even ask about him, they're dumb. I'm not saying they have to find the best deal and take it, but if they don't even listen, it's the wrong move. There is no "listening" process as far as I can tell. If a team wants to offer a bunch of prospects for Sale then you either tell them he's not available or you put some thought into the trade proposal, which of course involves putting your whole organization to work investigating further the players offered. There's no reason to do that when you have other pieces you HAVE to move. Why waste time? If someone calls up the Sox and says "We want Sale, we are prepared to drastically overpay, we'll give you a list of 2-3 players you can't have but go ahead and take any 6 guys out of our organization you like, and we are prepared to make that deal" then sure, you can do some legwork then. But that isn't going to happen. Trade Sale for a bunch of prospects and you're almost certainly going to lose in a big way. Re: Bernstein also, the Sox ARE NOT completely rebuilding. They are looking at moving almost the entire roster not because they WANT to have to replace an entire roster, but because they have almost no depth while facing FA and very few young core pieces. By making the likes of Q/Santiago/Viciedo etc. available it doesn't mean they will trade them, but it means that there is such fluidity here that you might as well take some offers if another team shows it is serious.

lol why are you guys even watching this? ive got the music on, f*** this team

Could? Or done? Done gets me excited, could does not.

BOO!!!! All trade threads should be in PHT!! IMO!!!!

QUOTE (IowaSoxFan @ Jun 28, 2013 -> 01:40 PM) Mitchell wasn't a high ceiling prospect. He was a guy that struggled with contact in college that KW thought would all of the sudden learn how to hit when he got to the pros. He was a high floor prospect because he was close to being finished when he came out of college and you knew what you were getting, good speed, solid defense and power to the gaps, and he struggled to recognize breaking balls. KW was infatuated with athletes when drafting hitters over baseball players. When Mitchell was drafted there were people calling him the best athlete in the draft. If that doesn't say ceiling I don't know what does. Edit: he was also compared to Carl Crawford.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 28, 2013 -> 01:18 PM) I have generally no problem trading for pitching this year, but I'd stress that if the Sox are taking pitchers back, I want them to target pitchers who are a couple years away from the big leagues. It seriously doesn't help the Sox to trade for MLB-ready pitching right now, not with the logjam they have of pitchers already; it'll just force them to have to trade more pitching to find innings for people or shove people into the bullpen where they don't belong (again). I would guess that any MLB-ready guys are relievers & that on the SP side they are targeting ceiling, which means A & A+ guys probably. Usually the good AA types are labeled as being near-ready even though in reality they could be 2-3 years off.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Jun 28, 2013 -> 01:00 PM) The issue with the draft wasn't that the Sox had no money because they used it all on the MLB team, the problem was that Reinsdorf was best friends with Bud Selig and refused to go over slot (with few exceptions). That's what has been killing our minor league system for years. You're right about the first part. People see tons of prospects busting and demand a new draft philosophy, but fail to realize prospects are naturally expected to bust, even if you take a bunch of "safe" guys with your top picks. I actually love their new philosophy of going after toolsy/high-upside prospects because you increase your chance of drafting a superstar significantly and maximizing your potential surplus value. This exactly. Although Reinsdorf was doing what he believed was best for the game. He was making the sacrifice that the other owners were refusing to make. That's why I can't hate on Reinsdorf, he is a man of character & principle, but he did just sit there and watch the Tigers abuse the system, the Yankees & Red sox abuse the system, etc. It seemed like generally the Twins & Pirates stuck to their guns ala the Sox, but most teams just did whatever they wanted. The key here is that the best way to extract value from a MiLB system is to trade unproven players for real, proven players before they have had the chance to bust. I'm sure JR knew he was handcuffing KW who LVOES to trade prospects, but I respect the character it takes to stick to your guns like that, even though it pissed me off as a fan watching the picks come in.