White Sox's Bobby Jenks gets big raise but is still a bargain -- chicagotribune.comCongrats to Bobby Jenks on his big payday. The Sox agreed to $5.4 million for one year in Jenks first year of arbitration. He has come a long way from that log cabin in Idaho.Bobby has quickly become one of my all time favorite White Sox players, and not just because of the results. I appreciate the way he

Maybe I shouldn't use the phrase "rebounding" as that is the one thing the Illini haven't done well this year. Everything else has gone better than expected as the Illini look like they will be headed back to the tournament after a one year absence.Ironically, it is the 2007 recruiting class that is leading the resurgence. For a while it looked the 2007 class would be best known for the one that

Boston Red Sox beat Chicago White Sox 8-2 -- ChicagoSports.com: "'We have a powerful ballclub; it's all or nothing,' Guillen said after the Sox didn't hit a home run in consecutive games for the first time since June 25-26. They hit 96 homers during a 55-game span before this drought, but 114 of their 198 homers this season have been solo shots"But 114 of their 198 homers are solo shots? That was

Josh Fields get called up to replace Crede and gets the start at third tonight. The good news is probably can't do much worse than Crede when it ocmes to fielding percentage. The bad news is that he can't make many of the plays Crede makes look routine. Let's just hope he hits.The line-up:SOXCabrera ssPierzynski cQuentin lfDye rfThome dhKonerko 1bSwisher cfFields 3bRamirez 2bFloyd

I've been pretty confident at three out of the last five all-star breaks that the White Sox would make the playoffs: 2003, 2005 and 2006. But hey, they say 1 out of 3 is good in baseball so I;m not doing too bad.Lately I've been trying to lower my own expectations so I can't say I expect the Sox to make the playoffs this year. But without a doubt a playoff spot is there for the taking. And it

I didn't pick a great time to take a break. This year's White Sx are a fun club to watch. I think the biggest surprises this year have to be the contributions from Quentin, Ramirez, Linebrink, Danks and Floyd. Throw in Cabrera, Swisher and Dotel, and it's quite amazing the talent that Kenny has brought in over the last two years. Who needs a farm system?I have been critical of Williams in the

Who's ready for some college basketball? I watched Illinois scrimmage at Glenbrook North last week and there is a lot to be excited about. Illinois has a few good young bigs, Chester Frazier looked good shooting the three, and Pruitt is a beast down low. I think they can be better than expected this ...

It's a bit eye opening to see some of my favorite bloggers take the side of Geraldine Ferraro in her awful comments about Barack Obama. I think the argument they make can be summed up as "hey Geraldine Ferraro is right. A big part Obama's appeal is the fact he is black". Kaus even links Andrew Sullivan, in what he thinks is some type of Gotcha!.But of course, Ferraro said no such thing. She said

Many observers think the Clinton campaign has sunk to a new low with this ad:But it's not the fear-mongering that bothers me. It's the relentless spinning that comes from the campaign that is completely divorced from reality.From Ben Smith at Politico.com:Clinton aide Howard Wolfson called the suggestion that her ad today constitutes fearmongering "ludicrous," and quoted Obama's words back at him

Back in mid-January, I wrote that Western Digital (WDC) was a bargain at 25.27 and stated that there was no way that this stock was staying below $30/share. Then the very next day, a caller on Mad Money asks Jim Cramer if it was a good time to buy the stock and I started to get excited. Cramer would give a plug and I would see a nice bounce in the stock. But he said "don't buy!" and called hard

Yesterday, Clinton's chief strategist, Mark Penn, gave an interview basically stating that he wasn't responsible for the campaign's implosion. Today, Harold Ickes, one of Clinton's top advisers, gave a scorching interview in response. Among the many juicy quotes he states, "Besides Hillary Clinton, he is the single most responsible person for this campaign."First, the fact that these guys are

The boys basketball Class AA playoffs started on Tuesday night. It will be the last two class tournament as the IHSA decided to expand into four classes in 2008. There was controversy when the tournament divided into two classes back in 1972, but the tournament continued to be successful. However, I...

I did better in my stock picks than my baseball picks last year. I hit a couple homers with Helmerich & Payne (HP, 64% gain) and Western Digital (WDC, 79% gain) and a few doubles with Coca Cola (KO, 27%) and Ternium (TX, 41%). Surprisingly, all these gains were from value and not growth stocks. I di...

Bill Plaschke, Jay Mariotti, and others, have taken their turns ripping into Tank Johnson. They believe the Bears, the NFL, and the legal system, have been too lenient on Tank. Not only do they not believe he belongs in Miami, but I get the feeling they would be happy to see him in jail. But for wha...

Well, I procrastinated a bit posting the run distributions. It wasn't all laziness. The numbers didn't really show anything that we didn't already know, so I wasn't motivated to put the charts together. Hmm, I guess that would still qualify as laziness. Anyway, on to the charts. Runs Scored Distrib...

There is no movement in the rankings of the state teams as they all continue to tread water (or sink at the bottom). In reality, there is not much difference between the top four teams. If they played a four team tournament I would be hard-pressed to predict who would come out on top. Illinois and De...

After giving this 30 seconds thought, and then spending 30 minutes building the tables, here are my predictions for the two Central divisions: AL Central TeamWLDET9468MIN8874CHW8577CLE8379KC6894 I'm going with Detroit since they are the only AL Central team to improve themselves over the winter. Mi...

I was going to write a snarky post about how the city was a lot more excited about the baseball playoffs in 2003 and 2005 then they were about this years Bears team. There were even 6,000 no shows for last week's game against the Seahawks. Now that had a lot to do with the huge price tag - but I can'...

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Colleges :: Illinois among five NCAA locks Not quite. I'm not quite sure why Herb Gould would make such a statement. If he pays any attention at all he would know that Illinois is probably in right now but far from a lock. If Illinois loses Saturday and in their opening round...

Sox GM Prepares to enter lions' den By any measure, Darin Erstad has been a pretty bad baseball player over the past six seasons. You do not have to be a stats geek to come to this conclusion. I'm not sure if Mark Gonzales looked at any stats before writing the garbage. Here are some choice selectio...

Here are the charts for runs allowed last season. As you can see below, the Sox pitching ended up right around league average. I guess it only seemed worse. Actually, it started out fine but got worse as the season went along. I plan on looking at that in more depth in a future post. For now, I'll ju...

No, I'm not talking about the White Sox. Their future is probably a bit bleaker. I'm talking about the Fighting Illini basketball team. Is it too late to take back all the nice things I said a couple of weeks ago? My optimistic projections were based on three premises: a.) Shaun Pruitt learned how ...

Just a reminder that the Trib's annual baseball preview comes out with Monday's paper. I was sent the following press release for those interested (full disclosure: they are sending me a poster that will appear in select copies of Sunday's trib. What can I say, I'm a cheap date.) Also, Illinois' Mr. ...

I plan on posting the 2006 run distributions in three phases: against the 2005 team; against the AL average; and against the rest of the AL East. Run Scored Distribution - % of Games I posted these charts at the end of August but wanted to post the final numbers. Obviously, the 2006 did a much bet...

I'll have to do a little bit of research to find out since I don't remember the last time at least one state team didn't make it the NCAA tournament. We are looking at a very real possibility of this happening in 2008. Not a single team looks like they will be worthy of an at-large bid at season's ...