Monday, January 14, 2008

Broken Chicago Sports

This winter, Chicago sports have gone down the tubes. This town has now fell inlove with a Black Hawks team that isn't even in the playoffs at this moment, and they're on atleast a 6 game winless streak. My two main loves, the White Sox and the Fire have made questionable move upon questionable move.
White Sox
Failed to sign Torii Hunter and Aaron Rowand.
Drastically overpaid Scott Limebrink for 4yr/$19.5 million
Traded most consistent pitcher, Jon Garland, for 33 year old Orlando Cabrera
Traded organization's top 2 prospects for average hitter, average speed Nick Swisher
Traded for Carlos Quentin
Signed Cuban Alexei Ramirez for only $1 million per year after 5 teams scouted him (Yankees included)
Waited months for the Twins to Johan to see, just see if they could try to trade for Coco Crisp
Fire
Chris Armas retired
Left Ivan Guerrero unprotected in expansion draft and San Jose picks him up
Judas...I mean Juan Carlos Osorio leaves the head coach position at New York for "family" reasons
Took weeks upon weeks to find a coach, Denis Hamlett, who clearly wasn't first choice
Matt Pickens might leave
Still no quality personal at right-mid or forward
What to do
Well if I knew what to do in either situation, I'd be a millionaire, but here are my takes.
The White Sox pulled the exact opposite of what the Florida Marlins did to win the World Series. The Palehose traded their prospects for current players, while the Marlins win with their prospects then trade them away for more prospects. So as we speek, the White Sox have no prospects and a bunch of aging major leaguers. If it was up to me, I would do a total overhaul. Trade all my major leaguers, and start building from the bottom (minor leaguers) up. While this would put the White Sox on atleast a 5 year plan to get back to playoff contention, this is what is needed for the big picture.
I think the Fire can be more of a quick fix. Now that Denis is hired and Best Buy is sponsoring the jersey for around $3 million for year. The team has a load of cap room, along with allocation money from RBNY. The fire have to address in my opinion 3 main needs: right midfielder, forward, and central defense. Also, I would like the fire to get another man on defense, and a reliable off the bench scorer.

For the present time, I will be here every now and then, almost writing to myself what I think is wrong and right with Chicago sports.

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