Full Court Press

Tell your friend I'll put $100 on the Cubs! With or without Soriano.

With Wood back, we are virtually unstoppable now.

Roman responds: Except for yesterday, of course. At least you got rid of those pesky NL East clubs. The schedule's light the rest of the way.

You're right Romo but I have no doubt some of my fellow sox fans will call into sports radio with their misguided comparison to the 2005 Indians when they were 15 games out in July.

Lots of examples in baseball where teams with no expectations perform well in meaningless August games. I can see them getting to 80 wins which will probably 6 or 8 less than the Cubs.

Sox have just hit a hot streak. The will NOT make up all that ground and will just be happy to make it over the 500 mark.

Cubs will have a better record, but I wouldn't pop the champagne just yet. You have to have LOCK DOWN pitching to win a championship. I don't see that with the Cubs. They have one lock down pitcher. The rest are good pitchers.

I remember early into the season, the Trillion dollar Yankees struggled mightily. All that firepower in a line-up and they were going nowhere. A quarter of a season later they're nine up on us. That's just five bullpen cave-ins difference. The fact is, the first 3/5 of the season was an anomaly for the Sox as far as hitting goes. As for pitching, how often does your recent best starter (Contreras) overnight become your weakest link, and last years fifth man (Vasquez) become your workhorse. Granted, Buehrle is our best pitcher to date, but Vasquez has been the most CONSISTENT. It's the bullpen that prevented us from staying close enough to spark any late season rally. Thank Kenny for that. I wouldn't be surprised if we had four guys hitting 300 at this same time next year. Something is seriously wrong with Contreras though. You don't lose his stuff overnight, I'm sorry. We may not catch the teams in front of us, but the hitters are making for a respectable finish. That, coupled with the fact we have more remaining games against teams battling for a playoff spot, who sometimes have a tendency to play tighter due to pressure than those loose teams out of the picture, and the idea of catching the Cubs is not even out of the question. Heck, if Contreras goes to stud, two more guys wake up in the bullpen, hitting remains hot, and the new kids continue to inject some life, the abnormalities of the first three and a half months may be overshadowed by the drive for 08'. Sixty-nine Mets, anyone?

Congratulations Barry Bonds, now break the record and then hit an additional 43 homers afterwards to get to 800. You deserve the ACCOLADES regardless of the feeble attempts to tarnish your accomplishment that is going on. Hank Aaron, you didn't loose anything, somebody simply did better. We are not going to forget about you Hank so be HAPPY for Mr. Bonds.

Go White Sox!

Antonee I love your post! Just love it! Its my hope indeed.

"Congratulations Barrry"...pardon me while I puke

When you say "feeble attempts to tarnish his accomplishments", I assume you mean:

- his admission under oath to using the cream and the clear
- the hundreds of detailed pages documenting his performance
enhancing drugs and almost beyond belief body growth...to date, Barry has not brough up any lawsuit against this overwhelming documentation
- his former trainer who still sits in prison
- the testimony of his former lover to his drug use

no doubt that B*nds is one of many who have used sterioids/HGH...but please don't pretend he didn't use any

I don't know who posted on Barry, but I say ditto! And in about 8 years from now we should be celebrating A-Rods time in the sun.

The Billy Goat tripped Soriano...just like he jumped on Derrick Lee's back last year and threw him to the ground...I hate farm animals

"Strawberry/Rhubarb, I like Pie!!" has been a favorite chant of mine all year...It's catchy...I made it up...people do it...not near as catchy as my "Romooooo is a Homooooo!!" every time the Cowboys QB drops back to throw, though

I hope the Sox do well, too...just not as well as DaCubs...and they won't....

I wonder, and correct me if I'm wrong...who better to direct "Billy Ball" while were playing small ball.....than one of his disciples....Speed on the bases rattles a pitcher's cage more than anything else

Kerry Wood will be one heck of a story if it all works out.....get your pen, Roman

Well the numbers are daunting for the Sox to get back into the hunt but not a genuine impossibility. For example if the Sox sweep the Indians and beating Sabathia the 2nd game should be the biggest hurdle but we have Gar going against him so its quite possible but get to thhe other side of that big IF and the Sox would be 55-59. That would leave 48 games. If the Sox go 39-8 a an 81% rate the Sox would win 94 games and 38-9 would be a 79% rate with 93 wins. No doubt the tip top end the Sox could ever hope to achieve.

If the Sox sweep the Indians they would need to win 35 of 48 games at a .73 rate to win 90 games the number of wins they had last year and missed the playoffs. In 05 the Sox in April were 17-7 a 71% rate, in May 18-10 a .64 rate and in June 18-7 at a .72 rate.

I say Sox are a lock down 8th inning specialist away from sneaking into the playoffs. If the Sox can sweep the Indians then Kenny should be working the waiver wire for a near future FA 8th inning guy with the idea of picking him up now and locking him up for next year and beyond. The Sox bullpen lacked an experienced gutsy vet who was comfortable with the 8th inning pressure and successful in that role.

Of course for any of this to be real the Sox have to play their butts off running out every grounder,diving to save hits, working the count, just totally leave it all out on the field the next two months starting with this Cleveland series. If I dont see every player working their behinds off to sweep these guys then I will be very dissapointed in this team as up to now I put 90% of this screwed up year on Trader Kenny for screwing up the bullpen with arms too young and too wild and screwing up morale by putting both Mark and JD on a short limb ready to cut if off at his leasure.

BTW Cub fans I believe the Soriano injury is an omen that Kerry plays well he rest of the year. With the Cubs notorious late season bad luck I figure something bad had to happen to even out a big time positive for the team. In fact I predict before this season is over Kerry will become the closer and a darn good one for the Cubbies.

No one person is indispensable. The Cubs will be fine. However, it would be nice if Murton could become more proficient at the plate. It still puzzles me as to why the Cubs brought him back up again anyway.

it was a Sox fan who congratulated Barry. Just dismiss it...as usual of course.
Kerry will not be a good closer......and I notice they did NOT call up Felix.....oh well , "there's always next year" young man.
I don't think the Sox are capable without Iguchi (that was sarcastic). Hey, did you guys know you have Darin Erstad on your team??
Let me bottom line it for you. The difference between these Sox and the infamous 'firesale' Sox is= NO ONE wants any of these players. Why else would they keep them????? You can't win with a bunch of 'nobody want you's'.
See ya later Lou....................like in the brodcast booth next year. Maybe we can get Ozzie to hold these slackers accountable. No,because he hates the Cubs. GOOOOOOOO CUUUUBIES!!!!
Oh, and, ROMOISAHOMO!!!! GOOOOOOOOOOO REXXXXXXXX!!!

Keith Lifetime Southsider - I finally agree with everything you said in a post! (with the tiny, tiny exception that I will stick to my conviction that Jason Marquis is a bad pitcher, not a good pitcher)

Anthony Navarro - Contreras's decline was very predictable. He's up there in years (no one knows exactly how many years, but he's up there). He started to lose his power stuff a little bit last year, and power, rather than guile, was 100% the reason he was successful in the past. He hasn't learned how to change his style, and that's costed him dearly. Maybe he'll learn, as Jamie Moyer once had to, how to pitch without power stuff. My bet is that he just fizzles out into a nobody, a nobody that will cost us $10M each of the next two years.

Tom P - Nice analysis. I think we're a little further away than just one reliever, though. We have massive holes at LF, CF, SS, and if Richar doesn't pan out, 2B.

And finally, to address Roman's original post. Felix Pie's plus defense is his only saving grace, at +4 Fielding Runs Above Average this year. That's the only "area" where he will fill a void. In the other, more important areas, he is a void himself. To wit:

.216/.272/.345
.219 EqA
0.8 WARP1 (would almost guaranteed be negative if his defense was average)

Granted, I respect Pie's status as a solid prospect, and I know he will get better, but the fact of the matter is, he's filling Soriano's shoes THIS month, and for the purposes of the Cubs of this season, how good he is RIGHT NOW is the only thing that's important. And RIGHT NOW he's not good. At all.

Because Pie is close to replacement level, it's fair to use WARP to estimate how many wins the loss of Soriano for a month will probably cost the Cubs. Fear not, Cub fans. It's only somewhere between 1 and 2.

I turned off the TV right as Soriano was pulling up lame at third. That was enough for me. But no one expected this to be the Cubs year anyway. I figure they'll end up with around 83 wins and second place, much better than I expected. And another thing, why do all these ballplayers get hurt so easily? The guy was running from second to third, no collisions, tripping on a banana, falling over a mound along foul lines, etc. I don't get it.

Tom - you must have received some brownies from Keith...

Since the Allstar break last year, the Sox have been bad. What in the world makes you think this team can play anywhere close to .700 ball the rest of the way?

They have played well over the past 2 weeks since their hopes have faded, and the pressure has subsided.

Mr. Noles. Sorry, but Contreras hasn't been considered primarily a power pitcher since his Cuban Crossover. His split finger WAS one of the best in baseball, until this year. Sure he's up there in age, something I've mentioned quite often, but not only has he had trouble spotting well, his split is 'hanging in air'. He still throws high eighties, low nineties; just doesn't seem to have a reason right now. I could see if hitters were waiting off his splitter and smoking his declining fastball but he really has NOTHING going, N O T H I N G. Weird.

I will take your friends action Roman NP

How much?

Hypothetically of course. ;)

Thanks for all the feedback but to all of you who think my breakdown is more based on some hallucinatory drug than anything related to reality I do have a solid reason for still believing in this club. Whereas most of those that follow the Sox including those within the org itself seem to feel its a big mystery why the team drastically underachieved, I believe the reason is fairly obvious. When you look at an organization whether its a sports franchise or any business its rare to find someone or something that can increase or decrease the performances of most if not the entire organization. One of the most prevalent forces of these rare ones is morale. Juice up morale people look forward to come to work, cut its heart out people dread it. Even the most professional person with the best of intentions will not perform at a high level if a big dark clould of doom is hanging over his work place. Unfortunately for us Trader Kenny created the circumstances for the perfect storm that ultimately did emotionally pull the rug out from under the team.

His "genius" moves that set up this disaster started with trading Freddy and BMac. Its not so much that trading them wouldnt technically improve the team because 06 did dramatically show that fastball pitchers had a better chance of survival in the homer happy Cell than control pitchers. The problem with these moves is it apparently put the team on notice Kenny is ready to break up the core of the 05 champions if 07 goes south like 06. So now the dark clouds start gathering over the heads of the players. Kenny's next move was like seeding these clouds for rain. He builds a bullpen with young guns that were more wild west than winning ways. If our resident genius had perhaps included just one proven veteran in this mix maybe he could have been a stabizling factor for the youngsters and most importantly for the 7 and 8th innings where most games seemed to get lost. But of course acquiring a veteran meant spending real money on pitching and in this off season that was out of style.

After his brilliant bullpen moves that left Kenny with his next bit of genius, putting quite a few men who are highly respected, well liked as well as quality ballplayers out on the FA limb making it appear likely that he really was going to gut the team of more of the core players from the 05 champions. Keep in mind what made this team a champion is Ozzie created a family like atmosphere and the players fed off that dynamic chemistry. Everyone has experienced loss, we all know even before the loss actually takes place but you see it coming emotions like sadness and anger start creeping in before they take long term residence in your gut. These players may be very wealthy but being paid a lot of money doesnt transform them into emotionless robots. The more the losses piled up the more it looked like White Sox family was going to get broken up. Its pretty well known the hardest thing to do in pro sports is hit a baseball. Well the hitters apparently had enough emotional baggage on their backs that it slowed down their bats. A fine line gets crossed and fat fastballs instead of being deposited in the seats get popped up.

Now that the emotional storm has passed because Mark is coming back and JD might so hope is in the air. Ironically enough so are hitters getting clutch hits and the bullpen getting clutch outs. This reminds me a bit of the year the Sox almost moved to Florida. The first half of the year the morale was as down in Soxdom as it could ever get and the team played really bad. Once it was decided the team was going to stay in town, the team finished strong. I thought Fregosi showed then what a very good manager he was under super difficult circumstances.

My apologies for getting so winded but I guess I had a lot to say about a complicated matter. A situation I might add that could have been completely avoided if Trader Kenny gave more thought to the value of team morale than the value of his trading skills and it would really help if he actually understood what constituted the morale of the team he controls.

Tom I agree with most of what you said, but I have to ask what was Kenny to do? Expectations for the Whitesox in 06 was to repeat, and the Sox came up short. Folks like Jay Marriotti were tearing into the Sox. Kenny and Ozzie were looking like one hit wonders. They were accused of not having the Sox ready last year and prognosticators were picking us 4th in the division. Cubs went out and spent a ton of cash. Pressure was on Kenny and Ozzie. I agree with your assessment about that pressure. But when you are in leadership and the employees are not producing, something has to be done.

Keith to answer your question, I believe Kenny had plenty of other options than the ones he took. What really screwed up the Sox's season was Kenny's reaction to all the big money paid to pitchers of all calibers this off season. He basically freaked out because while all the big money for pitchers that was flying around he still had to rebuild his bullpen. I think typical of Kenny he took the basis of a good idea but his execution had a fatal flaw. The Sox needed power arms because the short porches and wind tunnels turn 88 mph fastballs into game changing home runs. Getting power arms for the Sox was the right thing to do. Where his execution was flawed was Kenny filtered every move through I gotta get someone on the cheap. That led to young arms that throw fast but are wild too. The entire bullpen that started the season is paid 3MM/year. The other gamble in the bullpen that came back to bite him in the butt was he figured the 8th inning was covered by MacDougal or Thornton. From my vantage point before the season started, these are two guys I personally figured didn’t really want that role. Mac was a closer for KC so set up is a demotion for him. This was especially true because Mac was considered the 3rd best reliever and he primarily got the 7th with Thornton getting the 8th inning. Thornton is a big strong guy with a straight fastball in the mid 90’s or better and he was a starter before coming to the Sox. Thornton strikes me as a guy who needs to pitch a lot of innings to keep his fastball over the plate not to 2 or 3 guys at a stretch. Even as a long reliever Thornton could come early into a game and pitch a few innings. I don’t get why they don’t teach him another pitch and try him as a starter. My point is it didn’t surprise me at all that Mac and Thornton struggled as set up guys so why didn’t Kenny anticipate this as a possible problem. Its pretty common knowledge that many if not most relief pitchers typically are on a roller coaster from one season to the next.

This issue actually leads me to what I believe is the reason the Sox have trouble transitioning players from the minors to the majors. This organization always seems to bring up players only if it is absolutely the perfect time for the mother club and apparently give absolutely no consideration to when the players is at his ripest to make that transition. Historically, this org brings up pitchers too early and position players to late in the development to make a relatively smooth transition to the major league. Prime examples are Joe Crede and Jon Garland. They buried Joe for 2 seasons in AAA . Joe killed AAA pitching for at least 2 years but they were paying Jose Valentin a player I liked because they didn’t want to eat his contract so they switched him to 3rd and kept Joe down on the farm. So even though they spent lots of money developing Crede and could save themselves lots more by having a young player in the lineup over a veteran, they chose to risk all that because well money is money you know. So when Crede finally gets the permanent move predictably he has trouble adjusting because they messed with his mind by keeping down in the minors when he had outgrown it. Predictably when they finally bring him up he struggles offensively until he finally gets his confidence in place and becomes a cornerstone of the team like Mark and Paulie. In contrast there is no way the Twins keep a Crede buried in the minors the way the Sox did. Garland is a good example of how they treat young pitchers. They rushed him up to the majors before his maturity level caught up with his pitching ability. He became one of the best pitchers in baseball but, they almost ruined his career. However they did ruin other pitchers careers by doing the same thing. Duane Schaefer has a legitimate complaint against the Sox for scapegoating him as the reason the team has trouble getting their youngsters to become productive major leaguers. This issue goes back to when the team was first acquired by Reinsdorf. After 83 the Sox signed all their starters to big contracts and for one reason or another they all went south. With the exception of the Jamie Navarro fiasco this org didn’t pay anywhere near the basic market value for an established starting pitcher until they signed Freddie Garcia. Even with Freddie it looks like because Ozzie was the manager Freddie gave them a discount and Navarro was discounted too because of his problems. So is it a surprise that they had to get a discount from Mark before the signed him long term or that Kenny jumped all over Vazquez and Contreas because they took up Kenny’s offer to extend starters contracts as long as they went for the hometown discount. Looking for discounts for pitchers has plagued this organization for over 20 years. It was no coincidence that our team finally won a championship because they had 5 quality major league starters.

The other bad move that Kenny made and this one really irks me as much as his bullpen fiasco was his attempts to address the Sox’s need for speed. Before the trade for Pods I have been screaming for at least one if not two quality base stealers in the starting lineup of this team. The Rudy Law, Julio Cruz and Lance Johnson, Joey Cora teams showed what a major kick start having 2 speedsters can do for the entire lineup. So when Pods shows up and gives the team a better than .600 winning percentage with his presence in the lineup I keep looking for the second speedster to play either CF or SS. However because Kenny was so obsessed with acquiring as many power arms with cheap salaries as humanly possible, he ends up putting a band aid on the lineups need for speed. I mean isn’t it just a little irrational to expect 2 guys in their 30’s both with a history of injury problems to fix the need for base stealers in the starting lineup. It doesn’t take a genius to know if a base stealer’s isn’t in real good health he aint worth much to the team. I bet if Jerry Angelo was Ozzie’s GM and Jerry had 4 off seasons to acquire the kind of base stealers that Ozzie obviously prefers on his team good ole Jerry would have base stealers all up and down the org based on how he feeds Lovie’s defense. That’s what a good GM does and that’s what Kenny did not do. Having both Pods and Erstad out of the lineup on top of the win now pressure or the team gets gutted situation all led to the hitting going south and those problems could have been prevented by the GM with better foresight, better planning and by not panicking over cost of doing business in the major leagues. Again my apologies to those bored by my long winded explanations.

Soriano is about 38 years old, at least. Fat old men, myself included, hustle from first to third in softball leagues across America every day and don't tear their quads. Seriously? This is his second trip this year to the DL because he was running too hard? He'll be 46 when his contract is up. And why is he so small? He must weigh a buck sixty-five. Hey 'Phonse, get some HGH like everybody else. Why do we have to sign the malnourished looking superstar for 8 years? I mean c'mon. I liked signing him when he was 40/40/40. Now he's like a 25/25/Whatever. I don't care about his feelings wanting to leadoff. His OBP is .335. That's retarded. His average should be .335. Why do players always choke for the Cubs. I can't take it. I wish I didn't care so much because I'm going to suffer with this team for my entire life. My Grandpa Clint, God rest his soul, loved the Cubs. He never saw them win. He was 90 when he died! I don't not want to live to be 90 just so I don't have to go through the pain of a Cubs season every year. Yeah, I love Wrigley. I love Chicago, I love the Cubs, but Lord, why are we cursed? Because of a damn Goat? I think I suggested this last year, but we either have to a) adopt a pet goat as an organization or b) sacrifice a goat at home platein an extremely bloody manner. One or the other. Torn quad? Seriously? I thought Soriano was Mr. Everyday athlete. Note to Al, you can't play everyday with a torn muscle. If hustling=injury then your career is in trouble as en elite athlete. Can we fire our conditioning coach or something? The Yankees did. Do we even have one? Big Z with the cramps? What's going on? Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tom,

Your reasoning is not sound at all. Trading Freddy Garcia and "BMac" made the team better. Nothing is "hanging over the heads of the players" to make the team worse. Some of them are just getting older and worse, as predicted, and others just plain suck. Here are the REAL reasons the team has no prayer!

Jerry Owens: .215 EqA, .297 OBP, practically no upside. Ozzie Guillen insists he starts every day and bats leadoff with those godawful things going for him because...OMG....get this you guys....HE CAN RUN FAST!

Danny Richar - slappy hitter (read: no power) who doesn't walk, and apparently is having trouble sustaining the batting averages he put up in the minors. Looks like Williams bit the fluky bullet!

No Bench - Cintron costs the team wins (negative WARP). The Gonzalez experiment didn't go well. Toby Hall, while a smart signing, has had an awful year.

A.J. Pierzynski bats immediately behind Paul Konerko and Jim Thome (guys who get on base a lot) and has a .241 EqA (not to mention, the last out of the game last night, which I was at, and it really made my night suck!)

The bullpen, though less disastrous of late, is still bad.

I don't think that Owens, Cintron, Richar, Gonzalez, Toby Hall, or the bullpen minus Jenks really care about the 2005 core. Because they weren't on the team. So the reason that these players suck has nothing to do with the things you said.

Noles, I have some serioius doubts you really understand the dynamic that exists in pro baseball clubhouses. Its not that I have ever visited one but having closely followed baseball and specifically the Sox for over 40 years so I like to think I might have learned a few things about it. For example it I have heard that in 83 Fisk and Koosman ran the clubhouse, Fisk controlled the position players and Koosman the pitchers. Similiarly, I recently heard that Konerko controls the position guys and Buehrle the pitchers. Now the parallel between the two teams isnt exact because I believe Ozzie has a much much stronger clubhouse presence than LaRussa had at that time as LaRussa was millimeters from being fired back then and the players sensing that kicked it into gear and won 99 games. Comparing Ozzie and LaRussa I see Ozzie as a true leader of men whereas by my account Tony is more of a supervisor of ball players. My point is that certain players by the performance and personality achieve positions of leadership with their clubs and losing these players creates a real vacuum of leadership that for a time hurts the team. You can choose to believe me about this or not, unfortunately it appears Kenny is treating the value of this type of leadership about as cavalierly as you are.

Tom P,

I submitted my thing before your "long-winded" explanation was posted. Believe it or not, I agree with most of it, with 2 exceptions. There was no forseeable reason for MacDougal to flop so long as he was healthy. It was very fluky, and I don't blame Kenny Williams at all for that failure (Thornton, I'm with you on, but for different reasons). The other thing is that baserunning speed is the most overrated commodity and baseball, and a major problem with the White Sox is that they overrate that commodity MORE than your average team. Example: Jerry Owens. If the White Sox started 9 Jerry Owenses, they'd score less than 3 runs per game (by baseballreference.com's RC27).

The main thing that I want to address is the second post. You are right. I have no idea how clubhouse dynamics work. I don't think you do either. The reason neither of us know is that we're not in there interacting with the players. All we get are interviews and whatever nonsense Hawk and DJ spew.

Second, look at the guys that Kenny got rid of! You claim that Kenny is treating clubhouse leadership in a cavalier fashion. You also said that Mark and Paulie are the two cornerstone guys. However, who did he sign to the long contracts? Those two guys. If you think the leadership was coming from Iguchi, Mackowiak, Freddy Garcia (he DRANK before night games!), and Brandon McCarthy, you've gotta be kidding me. To tell you the truth, I don't put too much weight at all on clubhouse dynamics (Carl Everett and Frank Thomas played for the 2005 team, to wit), because you can't see how it tangibly affects the games played. Things like Jerry Owens being bad at baseball are visible, and directly affect the game being played.

My point is, even if you WANTED to argue that Williams takes a cavalier attitude with team leadership, you would probably need him to have traded away Mark or Paulie....or maybe A.J. Fact is, Williams has kept his leaders.

Great call by Steve Stone! DJ better hurry up and get back! Sox should be up 2 zip. Danks gift rapped that game yesterday and we are at home. Should have it. Typical of the team this year. Cold bats.

Noles, again its good to get your feedback and I can see you know your baseball in spite of us disagreeing on a few key points. Its seems to me our main disagreement is who to blame why this season went sour. You seem to want to blame the players and Ozzie whereas I am mainly putting the burden of blame of Kenny. The thing about Ozzie is even though I dont agree with every move he makes he strikes me as strong leader which I put more value in than how well he makes out a lineup, how he changes his pitchers and other technicain type moves a manager makes. I dont believe the season went bad because of Ozzie's moves or leadership. On the players side as I tried to point out in some detail I believe their performance was undermined by mgmt.'s insensivity to the chemistry of the team.

To address a few other points we disagree on. Yes Kenny signed Mark but you cant say he didnt try real hard to trade him. What happened was he could not get as much as he wanted for him in trade and Mark also made the deal happen for Kenny by agreeing to take much less than his market value. So I give Kenny about 20% credit for that signing with the rest going to Mark and other forces that pushed Kenny into it. As far as the other guys you mentioned I never said they were cornerstone players. The rock bottom cornerstone players IMO are Paulie, Mark, Crede, AJ, Garland, Jenks, and probably JD as well. There are other important players to the team but losing any of these guys would create a hole in the team the size of a crater. As far as giving credit to Kenny for signing Konerko again from my perspective it was more Konerko than Kenny that got that deal done.

You say Mac going bad was fluky. It didnt surprise me for the simple reason when someone gets a demotion they typically have a real hard time adjusting to lesser responsibility thats a know fact. Last year in the back of my mind I questioned how long Mac would accept being the 3rd best releiver when he had been number one so that wasnt a fluke IMO it was almost inevitable.

Last but not least on the issue of the value of team speed we really part company. Kenny in his lack of insight also undervalues speed or he would acquired more players with it. As to proof you are both wrong just look at the history of the Sox the last 20 years or more. Whenever the team has at least one or two speedsters the offense clicks big time. When it lacks a quality leadoff man the offense is as streaky as streaky gets. As they say if you ignore history it keeps repeating itself.

Noles, again its good to get your feedback and I can see you know your baseball in spite of us disagreeing on a few key points. Its seems to me our main disagreement is who to blame why this season went sour. You seem to want to blame the players and Ozzie whereas I am mainly putting the burden of blame of Kenny. The thing about Ozzie is even though I dont agree with every move he makes he strikes me as strong leader which I put more value in than how well he makes out a lineup, how he changes his pitchers and other technicain type moves a manager makes. I dont believe the season went bad because of Ozzie's moves or leadership. On the players side as I tried to point out in some detail I believe their performance was undermined by mgmt.'s insensivity to the chemistry of the team.

To address a few other points we disagree on. Yes Kenny signed Mark but you cant say he didnt try real hard to trade him. What happened was he could not get as much as he wanted for him in trade and Mark also made the deal happen for Kenny by agreeing to take much less than his market value. So I give Kenny about 20% credit for that signing with the rest going to Mark and other forces that pushed Kenny into it. As far as the other guys you mentioned I never said they were cornerstone play