Greg Hibbard

If we're somehow within a run and into both bullpens, I'd take that situation in a heartbeat if you would've offered it to me earlier today. Honestly, I expected us to be down 4 or 5 at this point.

QUOTE (kyyle23 @ Oct 2, 2008 -> 11:10 AM) Wait a second, the Sox are 4 - 6 vs the Rays this year? Why does it seem like they are 1-7 to me? because you miscounted the last 7 games and forgot about the series in april that we won.

QUOTE (fathom @ Sep 24, 2008 -> 09:26 PM) It's kept me entertained all the way up until and extending past game 157. There's nothing else you can ask for. I can't believe Linebrink is in. He's only better than Ramirez and Logan right now. Yeah, it's too bad it may end so badly, but man what a great season. No sarcasm. I only hope people who are resorting to ludicrous histrionics are prepared for a lot of ridicule should anything suddenly turn.

I'm now experimenting with the rationale that it's better to lose the division because if KW gets mad enough, maybe a lot of heads roll. Maybe not though. Maybe they just end up citing the lack of Quentin.

QUOTE (TheBigHurt @ Sep 24, 2008 -> 09:06 PM) I still can't believe this joke of a team has been in 1st all year. It seriously blows my mind. "We're a better team than Minnesota?" My ass. well we're short one bit player in Carlos Quentin - but he probably didn't make too much of a difference.

QUOTE (rowandrules83 @ Sep 22, 2008 -> 12:50 PM) Not sure if this matters, but Javy's statement was made a day before Ozzie called him out. I'm not sure the context of what Javy was actually asked, but he certainly was not responding to Ozzie's criticism. Oh wow, I didn't notice that. I guess that does change the context of this.

Vazquez's answer when his head coach calls him out to step up and perform in the biggest game of the year is not to respond to said point, but instead to pontificate on his retirement and the millions of dollars he will have, and state that he doesn't care what anyone thinks. I can't think of a worse response.

I'm sorry, was there another way to interpret "whether I do well or not, I don't care what people think, I'm outta here in a few years living the good life"

Vazquez's response tells you all you need to know about that paycheck-casher. Enjoy your retirement in Puerto Rico, you ungrateful idiot.

Can the three people who answered that they will sweep us answer me this: How is a team that hasn't won 3 straight games in almost a month suddenly going to win 3 straight games and how is a team that hasn't swept a home series to a team not named seattle suddenly going to sweep a home series? I hope this series once and for all puts to bed this twins mystique bulls*** I know we've lost 5/6 up there but the twins are playing like TOTAL DOGs*** the last month, much worse than the sox in almost every facet.

In the summer of 1990, Frank Edward Thomas made me a White Sox fan. I was 15 years old, and had rooting interests on both sides of town at the time. My dad was a fan of both, and my friends were mostly split in their allegiances. After the 1989 collapse of the Cubs, the emergence of Frank Thomas was like a freight train that cut through all my previous experiences with sports. It's rumored that Thomas is a guy too often preoccupied with stats. If that's the case, from 1990-1997, there was at least one fan who stared at the paper on a daily basis probably more than he did, trying to wring every last ounce of goodness oozing out from the Soxplus portion of the Chicago Tribune Sports Section. It was undeniable: this was not only the best hitter I had ever seen, he was arguably the best right handed hitter of all time. In hindsight, although I appreciated him to a large extent, I can't imagine what it would be like to fully appreciate Frank Thomas, because I think fans of opposing teams are required to help to describe it. Every fan of every opposing team feared this man, and knew that in any situation he was likely to deliver. To pore over all the stats at this late day would be redundant. Simply put, this man has done what no man has ever done before in several ways. He was a singular force in that decade, more patient at the plate than almost any of his contemporaries, and more balanced than many of the outright sluggers. I will say that his projected stats from the 1994 season seem cartoonishly outrageous, even in the post-steroids baseball era, and deserve to be noted here. Assuming 160 games played, these would have been his stats given no falloff in the last two months: G 160 R 150 H 200 2B 48 3B 1 HR 54 RBI 143 BB 154 K 86 .353/.487/.729/1.216 Absolutely, disgustingly, sick numbers. As with anyone so dominant, the decline was precipitous and unexpected, but predictable because his massive, 250 lb frame held more than just the team up over the decade of the 1990s. However, he surprised us with a magical 2000 season, only to be robbed of a third MVP by a cheater so representative of an era thankfully over. Whatever lack of charisma he may have had with his fans, teammates and coaches was made up for with one undeniable tenet of his character: he was clean, and he had the deepest respect and esteem for the game. He surprised us again with a couple more seasons in which he was able to show flashes of what he once was, slugging out 42 home runs in a 2003 campaign with a near .270 average, more than respectable for a man in his late thirties, and also carrying Oakland to a 2006 playoff berth, but most importantly, giving us absolutely everything he possibly could, on one leg, to hit twelve home runs for us and perhaps granting us that extra boost we wouldn't have had without him, that extra boost that maybe provided that oh-so-fragile 1.5 game lead we ultimately held onto. Most importantly for me, this man made me a fan of the game, he made me a fan of the white sox, and he made me a fan of him. I will never forget the memories I'll have of his journey through the major leagues, and not a day goes by that I don't check his stat line and root for him - sometimes, even when he's playing my beloved White Sox. Frank, I hope beyond my wildest dreams it's not the end of the road for you, but even if it is - you've been incredible.

QUOTE (scenario @ Sep 18, 2008 -> 10:46 AM) I'm sorry. I'm just having a hard time imagining how someone could say a lineup with Denard Span, Carlos Gomez, Brian Buscher, Matt Tolbert, and Alexi Casilla starting for them is "choking". Five position players with less than 5 years of MLB experience between them... and almost all of them performing above their minor league averages. Add that to 5 starting pitchers none of whom have a full year in MLB under their belt. Overachieving is a more appropriate term... not choking. So in other words, we can't say that the 03 and 04 white sox, who were projected not to necessarily win the division didn't choke either. They just "overacheived"

QUOTE (scenario @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 10:58 AM) I don't think the Twins are choking. When you have 5 starting pitchers who don't have even 1 full season season of MLB under their belts... and you compete this deep into a season... that's pretty amazing. They've been overachieving all year. I think what we're seeing is the long season finally catching up to those guys. I'm sorry, but they ARE most certainly choking. No team has a worse record in MLB than the Twins over their last 24 games - largely against 3rd, 4th and 5th place teams, and yes, largely on the road - but even Seattle on a 7 game current losing streak is 11-13 in their last 24. The Twins are an embarrassing 8-16, and 5-10 in September. I don't care how mediocre you are, when 11-13 would have been good enough to have the division lead, YOU DID CHOKE!

other than the 16/22 on the road from august 10th through september 2nd this seems like a remarkably easy schedule to me. only 8 games with oakland - 5 of them here only one series @ texas lot of bad NL teams I'm lovin it

QUOTE (SoxFan562004 @ Sep 17, 2008 -> 10:55 AM) Yeah, but I'll play devils advocate since I'm a Sox fan and supposed to be negative. From what I've seen the Sox are going to ask their starters to go on short rest in the KC series, that may neutralize some of the advantage the Sox have. Then you have to play the series in Minny, which we all know how horribly wrong that could go. Finally, the Indians are not an easy beat at this point, they have been playing well and Lee will pitch in that series. We'll see, it will be exciting My main point is that Minnesota is probably going to lose 5 or 6 of their remaining 11 games, not that the Sox are going to go on some tear or something assuming that's true, the white sox have to go just 5-7 or 6-6 to win outright.

I don't want to jinx anything, but these things bode really well for the White Sox: as tough as minnesota has appeared to us at the dome, they just split 6 games against 70-80 detroit and 67-84 kansas city, two bottom 5 teams in the AL. twins are 8-14 in their last 22 on the road, and this includes 1 series at third place oakland, 1 series at third place cleveland, 1 series at fourth place toronto, 1 series at last place baltimore, and 2 series at WORST place seattle. overall, the twins are 8-15 in their last 23, a sub .400 overall winning percentage. sure seems like a choke to me

Up a game going into Minny's brutal road stretch. Me thinks were in really good shape.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 12, 2008 -> 10:33 AM) I thought you were an eternal optimist. I was until late 2006. Suffering through the 18 months prior to the start of 2008 tempered my White Sox optimism quite a bit, although I still don't like knee-jerk reactions to single games and often try to steer people off of a ledge. To me, this is all gravy. I had this team not contending for 2-3 years and as it turns out, they are probably one great pitching acquisition away from being a strong contender for the WS next year. Sure, they could win the division and get hot this year in the postseason, but that seems very unlikely. One thing this team definitely needs to address this offseason are the clusterf*** of dh's we have. Someone needs to go.

I thought the Sox would finish in either 4th or 5th place, and even bet a fellow Sox fan $50 that they would not win 80 games.

Also, the Twins are 14-4 against the minor league NL teams and almost exactly .500 against the major league AL teams. Assuming they go .500 the rest of the way (which is assuming too much in my opinion given their schedule and their ridiculously unsustainable RISP BA), they end up with 86 or 87 wins. That's enough to win this division?

QUOTE (stretchstretch @ Jul 28, 2008 -> 10:30 PM) Like sunrise and sunset, shifting of the tides, changing of the seasons, the Sox sh*itting their pants in MN during the 2nd half, some things are just a lock to happen. This is now 4 straight seasons they'll take a nosedive after the ASB, the worst of all being 2005, blowing a 15 game lead save for a single homerun by Crede. As much as it kills me every year, with the race this close, this team has exactly a 1% chance of winning this division from MN....once again guys no one in the country have ever heard of become instant reliable superstars, they're just a superior organization, on bare bones budget and loss of every star they breed, they still snatch titles from the 110 and 130M dollar teams like ours and the Tigers. I'm now reaching the point of rooting against them as a defense mechanism for the nights and weeks of disappointment. With the money MB, JC, JV, are making it's an absolute crime to not be wiping the floor with their staff. Ok. Tell you what, you take Minnesota and their 4 recent division titles. I think I'll take the White Sox and their 1 recent World Series Title. Yes, they play above their level in the regular season. Yes, they beat us last night. We still have a lead in our division, and they still have to play 24/30 on the road from August 21st to September 21st. If they go .500 over those 30 games, which include 4@oak, 4@tb, and 4@LAA, I will eat a car. If you give me 100:1 odds on the White Sox, please pm me and I'll make you a bet of any size up to $1000. Hell, I'll even make that bet if you give me 10:1 odds. Otherwise, please stop overreacting over exactly ONE second half loss. The best teams in the league every year lose 40% of their games no matter how they play.

wow, well this thread sort of took off in a way that I didn't expect. First of all, I did a sort of ESPN's stats myself and was alarmed to find 7/64. No other team has more than 4 or 5 (I think that one is Boston?), and most have 1-2 hitters on that list (obviously). Yes, we score enough runs and give up few enough to be in first place. However, what scares me about this team are two things: 1) it's propensity to a one-dimensional offense 2) the high variance result of it Have you noticed this season how jekyll and hyde this team really is? One week we are crushing everyone, winning seven in a row, then suddenly, inexplicably, we are losing 4/5. It's maddening, and I'm worried we catch the other end of that variance at the wrong time - in october. We have a team of largely identical offensive prototypes, particularly with Dye, Quentin, Crede, Pierzynski, Swisher Konerko and Thome - all sluggers who can't run and are worthless on the basepaths. The speed we do possess in Ramirez and Cabrera have low OBAs and don't manufacture a whole lot speed wise. Ramirez has been caught more than a third of the time and Cabrera is going to end up with 25-30ish stolen bases for a season - hardly anything to write home about. However, he has been very effective at stealing, so kudos to him for that. My main concern is reliving the 2003 season where we let a team hang around and then get dominated in september and october because we didn't do anything to address the imbalance offensively. I'm not saying 2008 is the same - it's really different in a ton of ways, but I'm worried about something similar happening.

It might be, just might be, that I put this thread up before said monster win was final.

QUOTE (rangercal @ Jul 23, 2008 -> 04:31 PM) why didn't you see me first? Sincerely, The Catch All Thread Dear Catch All Thread, Please accept my humblest apology. I forgot that in order to be able to put up new threads, I needed to first sift through 66 pages of posts completely unrelated to each other. I will make sure I read the entire thread each and every day before putting up any new thread in the future.

QUOTE (DBAH0 @ Jul 23, 2008 -> 04:13 PM) Lemme guess, that would be Thome, Konerko, Dye, Crede, Quentin, Swisher and OC? yeah