stretchstretch

thornton is just a GOOOOD time!!!! we're about to see one bullpen totally outclass another

Rain delay with NYY, but watching Jeter go oppo and Abreu to deep opposite again....I was thinking about the day when Kong, Guch, Dye would routinely hit opposite field shots. In particular with Paulie, who is struggling, seemingly hitting grounders to short every time up, used to go to right all the time for two baggers and HRs.... I see this with many other teams game in and game out, Twins, Angels, Yankees.....We'd be sooo much more effective going back to those days. Is this on the players, coaches?

QUOTE (DonnyDevito @ Apr 22, 2008 -> 08:31 PM) Dotel blows this year. Linebrink is good tho. 1 out of 2 ain't bad. I didn't expect a win tonight with the Yankmees Ace on the mound versus Contreras. But we should win the next 2. we also should have won the last two times Buehrle was up against two guys I never heard of, and those didn't go too well either......"should" is not a wise forecast with our chicago white sox..........

hey look at the bright side, it's not like ESPN is going to show a Yankee grand slam like 10,000,000 times tonight

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Apr 15, 2008 -> 08:18 AM) I'm thinking that Mr. Eveland's 0.68 ERA is due for a bump. It won't stay that way all season. Let's get the split against Oakland and feel good about this series. Go get 'em Danksy. GO YOU WHITE SOX!!! not really, the one pattern we've observed the past couple seasons is the Sox losing the one game where the pitching matchup favors them to win 19/20 times. yesterday was a prime example of our Ace holding a team to 2 runs and losing to a guy none of us ever heard of. Today, we don't have our ace on the mound, but certainly don't expect the Sox to knock out another no-name as would be the case with most other teams....we just have a knack for being flat against no-names and being strong against proven vets (with the exception Johan)

QUOTE(Wanne @ Mar 31, 2008 -> 06:27 PM) I'm still wondering why Dotel instead of Linebrink?!? Ozzie seems to prefer players of his native tongue when they're an option vs. those not of said tonguage, I'm not one bit surprise by this or Alexei out ther over BA

just got back from Tucson for the weekend, AR in his limited time at bat was patient, and when he made contact absolutely ripped the ball. saw him hit a screamer right at 3rd for an out against SD on Sunday, he walked away nodding his head that what should have been, wasn't a hit. limited exposure but still liked what I saw, could not possibly be worse than Uribe

QUOTE(sircaffey @ Dec 23, 2007 -> 06:10 PM) The most baffling part of KW's attack post World Series is the pitching. For a team that won the World Series solely on pitching, we suddenly have one of the poorer pitching staffs in the league. I think KW would be a good GM if he was able to develop talent from within. He can't succeed without available talent to support his ultra-aggressive style. But since the cupboard is bare, and not getting much better, it's time to bring in someone that cultivates young talent. we relied on Freddy and Contreras to a HUGE extent, it was impossible to know they'd be that dominant in the playoffs, and as well as be soooo bad later on, it's just the way the chips fall, and they fell for us in 2005.

QUOTE(ptatc @ Jan 3, 2008 -> 05:56 PM) He is using them....to obtain major league talent. One of the purposes of a farm system is to use them as trade bait. KW has said many times that the reason that they draft so many pitchers is that everybody wants pitching and I will have pieces that other GMs want. I usually am of the opinion that you hold on to promising pitchers instead of obtaining bats. However, an on base machiene, signed to a long term, cheap contract is too hard to pass up. He will be here through 2012. HE can be the future more than some of the other prospects because he is a quality MLB player. I want to compete in the division and for the playoffs NOW. Buy the pitching outright, Cleveland would have dumped Boston for except one factor, Josh Beckett's two huge wins in that series. Can't wait at this point to hope pitching prospects are going to pan out, if you want to win, go buy the proven guys...IMO

QUOTE(Vance Law @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 02:21 PM) Actually Rowand has been both GREAT and mediocre. 2 great seasons out of the last 4, and 2 not great. Maybe it would be great to get Fukudome. Maybe it will be mediocre. We'd like to think that his Japanese numbers will translate, but who knows? I read where the Royals new manager (who spent the last 5 years in Japan) was asked about Fukudome. He said he was great in Japan. Second best left handed hitter in the league while he was there. The best? Iwamura who is now on the Rays. Iwamura once hit 44 homers in Japan. He hit 7 for Tampa last year. Put up a .770 OPS which is a notch above league average- not bad at all for the $1.8 million he's making. Iguchi came over here and wasn't the star with power and speed that he was in Japan, but he put up league average numbers or a notch above. Not bad for as little as we were paying him. Fukudome, however looks to get 10, 12, 13, 14 million a year. Nobody f***ing knows how his numbers will translate. Nobody knows if his .400 OBPs will go to .360. Or if his career .537 SLG will drop significantly. Iwamura had a .544 SLG in 2006, which went to .411 in Tampa last year. Fukudome seems like a savior because nobody's seen him play. Nobody's seen him play badly. Nobody knows yet how he'll play here. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, his shiny numbers from Japan give people false certainty that he'll be great. I hope we get one of the centerfielders. Nobody knows whether Fukudome, or Rowand, or Cameron (leaving Petco and coming to the Cell), or Milton Bradley will have a better year next year. It's a crapshoot. I do know that $90 million for Torri Hunter is a retarded joke, though. What did Boston pay, like 50M just to negotiate with DiceK? Did his numbers justify the investment, he was decent but Josh Beckett he is not.

QUOTE(SoIL @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 12:55 PM) Two very good posts. Kenny Williams may not be the best GM in baseball but I'll take his aggressiveness and go down swinging attitude over the let's just give up attitude most of this board seems to have. Quite frankly that is how losers think. I don't want the Sox organization or players talking or thinking like losers. So Detroit and Cleveland look better on paper. The games aren't played on paper. On paper the Chicago Bears should be in first place and preparing for the playoffs. There is absolutely no way anyone can predict how this season will play out. We haven't even started Spring Training and people have written this season off and are threating not to show up for games. That's just sad. Will it be tough to make the playoffs? Hell yes. But if a team has any kind of character or toughness at all, they won't care about what the odds are. They'll go out and bust their asses trying to win it all anyway. That's what should be expected and I sure hope that is what we get regardless of what kind of "talent" we have on paper. The Bears aren't going to the playoffs???????

can someone put me in a cryogenic freeze and wake me up next time the Sox are up 5 games at the all star break??? I just can't deal with watching this organization implode any further.......

QUOTE(fathom @ Nov 22, 2007 -> 01:11 AM) Yeah, he was bad for them, but Yost also had no clue when to put him in/pull him. yeah, good thing Oz is a master of this!

QUOTE(Steve9347 @ Nov 19, 2007 -> 12:16 PM) and who's leading off? Garland's attitude sucked, even in 04-05 and Cabrera is a player with great numbers, two gold gloves, can steal, and tons of grit and cockiness that has been SORELY lacking since the post 05 trades. I live in the Anaheim area and watch the guy on TV quite a bit, he's exactly the type of personality that is needed. 33, big deal, does that automatically mean the downside of his career? I'll take chemistry guys like this who battle any day over a lax guy who doesn't seem to care if the team is winning or losing. Let's worry about winning next season instead of how much trade value the player will have in three years.....

those that write off the impact of Rowand's trade just see it to be too SIMPLE a way to bring a whole team down, but in doing so, continue to underestimate the value of chemistry and the impact on a clubhouse of a vocal fighter. We still have a majority of key players from 05 but this team they have no fight in them at all and have a manager that just could not find a way to right the ship. Yes, injuries, an atroicious beginning, and low years for a few guys hurt, but there were many windows to get back in it and they sank lower and lower to the point where now the veterens are just mailing it in.

that's what is so infuriating..... The 05 team was absolutely amazing at opposite field hitting (mostly Gooch and PK, who couldn't do it to save their lives this year), and working pitchers into deep counts. How in the world with the same players and coaching staff could they become the worst in the game?

QUOTE(BigSqwert @ Aug 9, 2007 -> 03:23 PM) Everything points to the Sox winning easily but for some reason I feel uneasy about this one. that's because the matchups that are wildly in their favor on paper they seem to always blow, and the ones where they should get wiped out, they don't. they seem to have a knack for making ultra high ERA rooks look like Cy Young candidates....

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Jul 31, 2007 -> 02:04 PM) Kenny must think there are only like 4 teams he can trade with. teams that have benefitted from trading with the Sox are more likely to do it again, Roward, Blum, El Duque paid off and those teams are coming back again

QUOTE(hitlesswonder @ Jul 25, 2007 -> 11:58 AM) It's not early. The Sox have a 0.1% chance of winning the Central next season. If you think the top 4 sox starters will all be back and all pitch this well next season...well, that's incredibly unlikely. Plus the Sox have so many holes in the pen and on the field, there's no way to fill 2/3s of them even. The Sox have less talent that KC at this point. I think the Sox can field an over .500 team next season with some good moves, but competing for the playoffs? No. Been reading this thread curiously, but had to jump in here. The Sox won the WS in 05 with a bunch of guys who were ALL hitting Point is that being the best at one thing goes a long way, in the 05 case it was pitching (which none of the experts saw coming that year). A couple relief changes next season and two position player changes, you never know what 08 might bring. Cleveland last year- explain that collapse? Detroit's staff of young guns might have an off-season next year, and a teams whole train can come to a grinding halt by just getting in a funk. No one knows from year to year what the season might bring? Chemistry is a big big thing in this game, and you cannot predict when things just start clicking, look at the friggin Cubs right now compared to their first half for example. Fields game winning bunt the other night was the first fire I've seen in this team in about a year, they desperately need to inject some good karma into this clubhouse because right now they're simply lacking passion as athletes, maybe a ring will do that to you, don't know, maybe it's the mgr, we'll see if Leyland is really magic in a mustache and can sustain this level year upon year?

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Jul 24, 2007 -> 05:04 AM) Oh it's something. How you can go from being one of the best teams of all time to this in a 2 year span is pretty mind boggling. exactly..................still not quite able to grasp such a rapid decline.... still searching for a rational explanation that I can accept and move on to next season However, I watch because I've now finally accepted the season is over and am looking for just a little joy that comes from oh, say, seeing a 7-1 score and checking back later to find they came back to win a most improbable 8-7, and watching the Baseball Tonight highlights (live in SoCal) of Pods with a clutch hit, Thome blast, AJ winner, and Jenks save to still cheering fans appreciative of the effort in a sweep. Looking for some positives to bring hope for the 08 campaign......

I can't think of one positive thing about being a Sox fan right now? Wins and losses are equally depressing, if that's possible. Maybe more free time this summer? (and next summer, and probably the one after?)

here's a peachy stat: It was the most runs scored by one team in a doubleheader since the Boston Red Sox totaled 35 in a sweep of the Philadelphia Athletics on July 4, 1939, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. ....that's a 68yr record broken by a team that is two seasons removed from the World freaking Championship....

first NYY, then the Cubs, now MN, we're a great springboard to get other teams out of a huge funk.....depressing

we won't get worse than winning 1 of every 6 games, so I'd say finish 15 back of division winner Detroit

good thing we don't have Rowand's .320 avg, 8HR, speed and defense to deal with on top of all our other troubles good thing we don't have Rowand's .320 avg, 8HR, speed and defense to deal with on top of all our other troubles