but chances are that without the injury to Peavy, he doesn’t waive his no trade.

I think Cameron would be a good guy to sign in the Offseason, until Danks is ready.

The 7th inning today was a blast, can you believe that this team has stolen home Twice?

1. Sox on TV up here in East Dakota.
2. Game was awesome.
3. Sox made probably-good trade.

This makes the White Sox the favorites in the Central for the next couple years.

You can argue it’s the best rotation in baseball once he returns.

But to sum up: it’s risky (Peavy needs to be good and the contract can’t be crippling). But it’s awesome to see the Sox attempt to build a very good team instead of accepting mediocrity or rebuilding.

The more I think about it, the more I like. Honestly, the Sox wouldn’t get a pitcher of Peavy’s caliber for 3 years (+4M buyout) in the free agent market. So, this was a rare opportunity, even if Peavy isn’t great in the Cell/central (as long as he’s good).

If Cheat is right and there is money to fill the OF and DH holes, it’s a very good gamble.

after tonight, though, it’s tough to not get a little greedy and ask for three of four, especially with Danks and Buehrle (albeit against Burnett and Sabathia) taking the mound for the next two.

Agreed with hitless, too. There is a good amount of risk with Peavy, but Kenny is one clever off-season away from building a team that’s on-par with the three behemoths in the East. They’ve got some real tough yet interesting problems ahead — bring back Contreras on a one year deal, push Hudson or go another route? Deal or keep Jenks? Dye and Thome? CF and 2B? It’s comforting to know that the Sox — even with the Peavy acquisition — appear to be in a good financial spot heading into the winter, especially if prices for the second-tier of talent stays (somewhat) suppressed.

I think we can win this year and next year and the year after that. I don’t think that Carlos Torres will be that much worse than Clayton Richard was. If we can sneak into the playoffs this year, and we can run out Peavy, Buehrle, Floyd and Danks…. I think we could beat any team in the league.

who knew?

I assume Betemit is going to be traded for a bag of baseballs. Wise will probably get his to some degree at this point. Pena won’t be a backbreaker, but Danks, Q! and Bobby have to be more than 10 by themselves though, right? I think $15M is a better guess. That leaves ~$20-25M to play with 4 holes: DH, RF, CF, 5th starter.

The easy solution is to use most of it to pay Thome, Dye and Contreras in 1-2 year deals. Kenny has shown a tendency to reward his guys and they’re all decent bets for repeat performances in ’10. That leaves a couple mil for yet another stop gap CF solution while Mitchell and Danks have at it, not to mention backup catcher. There should be enough bullpen between Pena, Thornton, Jenks, Link, and Linebrink. Might need a LOOGY.

He’s looking forward to pitching with Scott Linebrink and hopefully win a World Championship.

b/c it provides the team tremendous flexibility going forward.

make the playoffs this year and you have a monster rotation that can compete with the best of them in a short series.

miss the playoffs and, depending on the economic outlook of baseball during the offseason, you can deal jake for a small loss, if economic circumstances dictate as much.

this move was very forward looking but also, given the division as is, could payoff in 2009 as well.

i imagine the negotiations happened something like this:

3:58 — your division rivals made some moves, are you sure you dont want JP?
3:59 — nah, i’m waiting to see if the ‘other team’ in town makes a move. if they don’t, get back to me. i may be willing to make a splash and buy some goodwill around here.
3:59:22 — doesn’t look like they are.
3:59:33 — what more do you want?
3:59:43 — throw in the jew.
3:59:50 — texting jerry now.
3:59:53 — and???
3:59:59 — consider it done.

Kenny is praying it is Jermaine. He has shown absolutely ZERO signs of decline both with the bat and will the glove. I think Kenny takes advantage of this economy and gives JD a 3 year deal worth around 20 million(like 6.3 a year) and throw in some incentives. Jermaine is going to have a very hard time finding a place that will pay him the money he is worth. Just ask Bobby Abreu and Orlando Hudson. I see Thome having a very hard time finding a job. If they Sox fail to get a corner outfielder this off-season, then they could give Thome a one year deal worth jack and have Dye man right field for one more season.

For CF, I really hope the Sox go get Coco Crisp. He is the ideal leadoff, quick CF the Sox need. Should cost less than 6 mil a year.

Lastly, trade Jenks for that 5th starter. Not a very popular move, but he will be demanding alot since he is arb eligible and there are better options to be had. He can get you a decent 3-4 SP, possibly a 2 guy and have Thorton close or sign one of Mike Gonzalez or Rafael Soriano as Atlanta won’t keep both.

I believe half of what the Sox would of had this off-season now goes to Peavy. Luckily MLB doesn’t have a salary cap, so if Kenny wants something, Kenny will go get it.

Phew, well that is my off-season in a nutshell.

but here is peavy on the deal.

but i just wathced the daily recap, and it looks like me made the yanks look stupid, but while doing so, playing really well at the same time. w00t.

i hate the yankees. just barely less than the twins.

Let’s Peavy this thing

I lept into the air like a little girl when Getz dropped that hit

I would resign JD and Thome. Not much out there that will replace them.

I think your best option for center field is putting Alexei out there. He won’t have to do much thinking…just run down the ball and hit the cutoff man. Nix would then move into the starting infield (at ss or 3rd i guess)…. or you could sign Melvin Mora to hold it down for Viceido and leave nix as backup infielder.

If you trade Bobby for a starting pitcher, bring back Dotel. if you keep jenks, bring back contreras.

I think the sox are still going to win this the central this year…but this peavy deal brings me joy to look ahead to next year.

Cheat says:

I covered most of this in my ill-timed The Sox Mum At The Deadline piece. Seriously, I hit publish and literally seconds later I saw the first tweet about Peavy, and had it posted as an update 3 minutes after the original posting time.

Ozzie says:

‘’By the way, I write my [Internet blog] to Venezuela, and I say, ’We’re going to go with the same team.’ All of a sudden, two minutes later, I had to come back and say, ‘We just made a trade.’’’

could be a segment on one of those commercials for the ‘mysteries of the unknown’ books from the 80s.

i have a weird feeling we are going to be giddy at the end of the deadline.
i dunno what it is, but i think KW has something up his sleeve for this season…

by BoeJouma on Jul 29, 2009 9:25 PM CDT to parent

I’ve made a huge mistake.

That starting rotation, nice. And a core of Beckham, Q! and Tyler Flowers, all of whom have the talent to post a .900+ OPS, nice.

You can build a very solid team around those pieces, and there’s lot’s of room in the budget to fill in around it. Good time to be a Sox fan woohoo! next few years should be fun.

Home: 779 K, 212 BB, 51 HR in 728.1 IP, 2.83 ERA

Road: 569 K, 223 BB, 84 HR in 614.1 IP, 3.84 ERA

Coors Field: 36 K, 24 BB, 8 HR in 51.0 IP, 4.59 ERA

Chase Field: 81 K, 34 BB, 17 HR in 78.0 IP, 5.77 ERA

Non-thin-air Road:452 K, 165 BB, 59 HR, 485.1 IP, 3.45 ERA

 ==> For those who don’t like math, that’s a 9.0 K/9 rate,against a 2.9 BB/9 rate. Road rates (even including the rough parks) are 8.3 K/9 and 3.3 BB/9. Oh, and he’s getting better, with a 10.1 K/9 rate in 2009!!!

For the record, the typical Home/Away split in the NL is 0.50 ERA (4.47 to 3.97 in 2009). Clearly, Peavy has had some problems in Chase Field and Coors Field, but there are no thin air parks in the White Sox division, and only a few games per year in Texas. And any Petco pitcher is going to obviously have a larger-than-typical Home/Road split. But, if you compare the non-thin-air stats (3.45 ERA) to the average road ERA in the NL, Peavy has been a full run better than average (3.45 to 4.47). That’s a Pythagorean win% of .627. The average road win% is .447, so Peavy is .180 better than an average pitcher on the road, a fantastic advantage.

For about 30 seconds, I remember sitting at work “working” (aka paying attention to the trade deadline, my supervisor is a baseball fan so she understood) and thinking “I wonder what is going on with Peavy, maybe they will try that again…. nooo that is pretty stupid”

Then a little while later while doing a home visit with one of my clients I get a text “Sox trade for Peavy”. I was pumped.

I like this trade because it has to potential to improve us this year, but is more about the future. This always was and still is a rebuilding year. We just happen to be in a shit division. These next few years are going to be great. That is another thing I like about Kenny, when we rebuild we get it done in about a year.

Didn’t really help much that year but looked pretty good the next. Obviously since Garcia was technically a rental when we acquired him, it didn’t cost as much, but KW wouldn’t have made the trade if he didn’t know he could sign him to a 3 year deal. Then down the road he flipped sweaty freddy for Floyd.

It’s been increasingly clear what KW’s “moneyball” is. After early missteps in his career (Todd Ritchie, David Wells), there is a pattern:

1. Only “bet the farm” (i.e. give up a lot of value) for top-tier veterans he has under control for many years at salaries that are below or at their value (Thome, Garcia, Vazquez, Peavy). The risk premium he’s paying (the prospects he gives up) is in exchange for the other team eating the risk on the long term deals it takes to sign these guys in the market .

2. Only give long-term deals to home-grown, exceptional players (Buehrle, hopefully Beckham), and even then, they aren’t that long.
 
3. Sell overrated prospects high (McCarthy, Poreda) for long-term better players (whether better prospects farther out (Danks) or veterans with reasonable deals (Peavy))

4. Acquire undervalued second-tier free agents when possible (Dye, AJ, Dotel)

5. Acquire high-risk formerly highly regarded prospects cheaply and see if they can meet their potential (Floyd, Quentin, Thornton, Jenks)

6. Strategically dump veterans who won’t be missed long-term to restock system

I think the thing that is most impressive is the speed at which KW makes these moves and readjusts the roster. The team we are fielding right now is better than the one we had in spring training. KW doesn’t hold on to losing bets too long. Sure there will be mistakes like Swisher along the way, but given the high risk/high reward nature of KW’s strategy, that is going to happen.

There’s a compelling case to make that KW is the best GM in chicago.

Factor 1: Nobody liked Swisher
Factor 2: Career worst year
Factor 3: economic panic

Still, not a good move, but I can see why it was made. That said, why didn’t the Sox ask for Gardner?

This was not a bargain in any sense of the word. You gave up your 2nd and 3rd best prospects for Peavy, who may flunk in his transition to the American League.

And he’s making around $15 a year. You don’t really know what you’re buying, and you gave up a ton for him. I give credit to Kenny Williams for the ballsy move, but it was far from wise.

Trading for a pitcher on the disabled list would hardly seem to qualify, but Kenny Williams finally got his man, trading Aaron Poreda and three other pitchers for Jake Peavy. It’s a huge gamble with both short-term upside—Peavy should be back from his ankle injury for September—and long-term payoff—he’s signed through 2012 at a reasonable $16 million average annual value (AAV), with a big 2013 option. The elbow injury that curtailed his 2008 season is a concern, of course, as is the possibility that Peavy’s ankle won’t let him pitch or pitch effectively during the Sox’ pennant push. Nevertheless, for what amounts to Poreda and filler (I’m not a Clayton Richard fan, although he’ll love Petco), it’s a strong move that, at worst, positions the Sox as co-favorites in the AL Central.

linky link

You can’t have 4 lefty starters in 2010. This move was made to balance the rotation period.

They didn’t trade, then signed Buerhle to his contract
Didn’t punt 2008
Signed Floyd to his contract

traded Swisher (okay I have to be fair lol)

Started the year with Richard, Contreras and Colon

Traded for Peavy???

1. Buerhle
2. Peavy
3. Danks
4. Floyd
5. Contrheas