Greg Hibbard

actually I think it's technically 18-20, 35-17 - but it's all gravy.

White Sox are 33-17 (.660) Rays are 32-18 (.640) Red Sox are 30-20 (.600) Angels are 30-20 (.600) Tigers are 30-20 (.600) Yankees are 29-21 (.580) Twins are 29-21 (.580) Cubs are 30-20 (.600) Brewers are 30-20 (.600) As much as it seems like all of the above teams have been red hot and playing better, we've been the hottest team in either league over the last 50 games.

Cliff Politte was also called the Vulture during 05, IIRC. Probably just about every reliever has had this nickname if they have a similar run.

Yeah, I think most of the problem here is that we have two analysts instead of a play by play guy and an analyst another thing that I can't stand about Farmer is that he takes as long as humanly possible to tell you the result of the play.

the situation where I had to actually pull out my phone and get the score went something like this turn on car, three minutes of commercials broadcast comes back on farmer: top of the seventh to ya, we have a pitching change, _________ is now in the game for the twins, he has a _____ ERA and a record of ______, and he'll be facing _______, here's the pitch stone: goes on some tangent about the pitcher farmer: continues tangent stone: continues tangent batter makes an out pitching change (first pitching change was for a LOOGY) farmer: we'll be back.

QUOTE (kyyle23 @ Jul 9, 2008 -> 09:07 AM) You say it at the beginning and the end of the inning, and when any team scores. I havent heard Stone and Farmer neglect to mention the score when any of those opportunities presents itself. I think they do a great job of keeping the audience updated In every situation where I've needed them to tell me the score this season, they've done so at the latest possible instance, and sometimes, incomprehensibly, not at all.

I worked in radio all throughout college and we were taught that your audience is always in flux, and that you need to be aware that they are constantly tuning in and out. Why is it that these two can never tell me the game situation without going on some tangent about something relatively meaningless first? On every occasion this season where I've missed the first several innings of a game, I hop in my car, hit 670 and am waiting for the score, and wait through 3+ minutes of banter before I can figure out what the hell the score is. On one such occasion, I pulled out my phone and obtained the score faster via the internet. That is inexcusably bad. How hard is it to repeat the score/game situation once, twice or three times an inning before you launch into some long-winded pontification?

1) Danks 2) Buehrle 3) Vazquez 4) Floyd 5) Contreras I know Floyd has had great success in the first half, but his BABIP and other peripherals suggest a return back to earth soon. I know his WHIP and ERA are relatively low, but I just don't like some of his other numbers and by all accounts he's been one of the luckiest pitchers in baseball the first half. Danks numbers are just absolutely sick as of late. Buehrle's last start was his first really bad start in a long while. Vazquez and Contreras are both sort of shaky in my opinion, but I'd put Vazquez ahead of either Floyd or Contreras.

QUOTE (Princess Dye @ Jul 5, 2008 -> 01:54 AM) tinwop: thread is nothing without pics wow I've never heard this term used outside of another forum I post at

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 3, 2008 -> 08:48 PM) It's been an awfully long time since we lost. Let's get in the win column again tomorrow. And the ninth was still full of drama, and we still had many chances to pull it out. I was convinced we were going to do it again. This team is starting to look pretty special. Even when they lose, lately it's not been without a ton of fight.

I'm not going to spend pages arguing this, but Blum single-handedly was responsible for the go ahead run in one of the wins. I'm not sure how he doesn't deserve the lion's share of the credit for winning game 3. I'm not saying Uribe didn't do more for the teams in terms of the overall picture, but I can't think of an individual play that Uribe made that meant more than Blum's HR. I know many will argue the outs in the ninth of game 4 meant more. I agree that they were both incredible plays. I don't agree that we don't win the games if he doesn't make either play. If Blum doesn't hit that home run, I believe it was only a matter of time until houston finally scored.

QUOTE (kyyle23 @ Jul 3, 2008 -> 01:28 PM) Well, he is thought of well enough during that series to get a nice fat spot in the memorial out in front of the Cell. I would argue Geoff Blum did more than Uribe to secure the series win. When the Sox went up 3-0, everyone knew they were going to win the series at that point. Had Houston won that third game, the series could've gone either way. Granted, the foul ball was a spectacular play, but in the context of the series I don't see it as being particularly crucial. I think it's easier to canonize because it was such a difficult play.

Uribe did make a couple of great plays to secure that 1-0 win, but I some people seem to be insinuating that were Uribe not our shortstop, we wouldn't have won that game. Yes, he was in the middle of a couple of good plays but I think framing his value in terms of the world series win is a bit much.

Not who do you think will win it....how many wins will it take to clinch the division for any team given the circumstances. I think 92 is about right. I don't think the Sox will play quite as good in the second half and I think the Tigers still have one more run in them given their schedule.

QUOTE (BFirebird @ Jul 2, 2008 -> 09:54 AM) The Sox are actually 3rd in baseball with RISP behind Minnesota and Cubs. We are hitting .284 http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/stats/aggreg...ng&type=reg It is when there are 2 outs that we struggle. We are only hitting .207 and ranked 27th. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/stats/aggreg...ng&type=reg Another reason why the Twins will probably eventually fall off: They are currently hitting .280 with runners in scoring position and 2 outs and hitting .313 overall with runners in scoring position. With the small margin of difference between RA and RS (lots of close games), I would assume they will start to lose a lot more games once they get fewer hits with RISP. Interesting - I thought we were way worse. My bad. It seems like every time we have a man on second with nobody out recently we struggle to score him.

QUOTE (Lemon_44 @ Jul 2, 2008 -> 09:48 AM) there aren't too many managers that are going to take the bat out of the hands of their 3,4,and 5 hitters.So he happened to hit into a DP,that happens. You didn't want a bunt in that situation di you? If they do bunt,which would rarely even be considered, they just walk Thome to load the bases and set up another potential DP or force out. As long as we have a man at third with less than 2 outs, if we ground into a DP at that point I can live with that I would think you're going to hit a fly ball enough times to score that run to justify giving up the out earlier.

I knew the response was going to be something like this. Look, the bottom line is with the existing M.O. our batting average with RISP sucks, so it might stand to reason that we might need to do something differently? Grounding out to third is about the worst thing you can do in that situation. Your primary objective with a man on 2nd no outs has to be to get that man to third with 1 out, regardless of who's up.

Is Ozzie's plan of attack automatically to always sit back and hope for a home run, no matter who is up? This situation has come up so many times recently and it baffles me why we aren't doing some fundamental things. Last night, I think it was 6th inning - JD up with 1st and 2nd nobody out - and then GIDPs. There has to be a better plan of attack for this situation with our atrocious RISP batting average.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jun 30, 2008 -> 10:01 AM) Basically I wanted to remind people that Konerko is the one responsible for the poor production at first this season. I understand that now. I read it initially as "the only production we've had has come from injured konerko" but what you were actually saying was "the terrible production is from an injured konerko"

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jun 29, 2008 -> 06:10 PM) (Note: Injured Konerko was the guy putting up that production). um...

some weird things to note team is 16-9 over the last 25 since the Rays series - .640 ball - but it seems as though we're choking the division away because the Tigers are a ridiculous 17-4 over their last 21 and the twins are 14-3 over their last 17... Thank god they play each other 7 times over the next 13 - SOMEBODY has to lose.

QUOTE (Princess Dye @ Jun 27, 2008 -> 03:37 PM) did he necessarily mean the offense though? In the context of how he originally brought the point up the previous half-inning, yes.

I love how Hawk was just trying to put it on the offense that they didn't "go for the jugular" by putting more than 8 runs up how about gascan contreras doesn't just give up home run after home run

QUOTE (whitesoxfan101 @ Jun 12, 2008 -> 02:23 PM) Nice try. They are obviously capable of making a run, as their offense is pretty good and they just swept us, but it doesn't change the cold hard fact they they were 11 games under .500 and barely out of the cellar 72 hours ago. Are the Tigers your normal 11 (well now 8) games under .500 team? Of course not, they don't suck. Doesn't change the fact that being swept by them is inexcuseable, especially when you only gave up two runs in one of the games. Teams get swept by other teams on the road. Long, extended losing streaks happen to world series winning teams. Check out the 05 Sox's August record. I believe they were something like 9-19. This is 3 games - let's be real. If they so much as even split the next six games I'm going to START to get concerned.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan101 @ Jun 12, 2008 -> 02:14 PM) Oh I agree with that. I actually thought we'd have a lot of trouble in this series, I just wanted one win going in. The thing that makes so frusterating is we should have at least got that win with the way Buehrle pitched today. Again, you're willing to acknowledge the team performed exactly 1 game worse than your expected value of this series...