Not a whole lot going on with the White Sox, or in baseball, this past week, barring the Sox acquisition of Ohman or the Matt Garza trade being dissected over and over and over. I suppose the Twins' focus on signing Carl Pavano counts, too. We'll dive right in, regardless.
From the Putting Numbers on Things We Already Know Department, the White Sox are near the bottom of the list in terms of C+ and above prospect value in their minor league system.
MLB Trade Rumors gives us an examination of the new and likely downgraded Twins bullpen. Matt Capps and Joe Nathan (presumed to be healthy) are still there, but the rest is nothing to be feared. The Sox play the Twins nine times before the trade deadline, and six of those games are in Chicago. Time to cash in off some soft Twinkies.
Apropos of nothing, some groundskeeper insight, as Roger Bossard is profiled in a Tribune article from 1998.
See what happens when you learn all them fancy saber stats? You end up playing baseball in Japan. Ex-Royal Brian Bannister signed with the Yomiuri Giants after becoming a free agent back in November.
Tim Marchman goes on a good Hall of Fame rant, while Mike Schmidt turns in some HoF ideas of his own.
This Greinke/Garza trade value calculator from Beyond the Boxscore is a great tool to play with. Take a few minutes and see for yourself. I can see bloggers' use of these becoming more widespread this season and beyond.
Also from BtB, MLB-wide sortable component part factors from the past 5 seasons. Turns out The Cell is bad for singles, good for walks and homers. Surprise! Target Field, in its limited sample size, is awful place to mash taters hit home runs.
I suppose I'm a couple years late to the game, since the Orioles have used it since 2008, but at least White Sox slogan isn't "This is Birdland." I'll pass on "This is Stockingland (Hoseland?)" for the Sox, but "This is Beerland" would have a nice Milwaukee ring to it.
Mark Teahen is a married man now. Sorry, ladies, get your own crappy backup third baseman. Oh, and rumor has it the ceremony was at a place called the Wrigley Mansion, as if we needed another reason to dislike the guy. While we're speculating on gossip, the last line of his ‘professional career' section on Wikipedia is fairly hilarious:
On June 3, Teahen underwent successful surgery on his right middle finger. Teahen, who if he were not playing baseball would most likely be a surgeon, also assisted in the procedure. Originally Teahen wanted to perform the surgery on his own, but it is against MLB rules for players to perform their own surgeries while under contract by an MLB club.
Citation needed, indeed.
Gordon Beckham is also on Twitter now, after promising himself he wouldn't tweet.
Lastly, of course we know that Danks, Quentin and Pena are up for arbitration. Here are the official details straight from the White Sox website, but that embedded video is key. Those swinging third strikes are beautiful to behold on a cold winter day.