JUSTgottaBELIEVE

TEAM A 79-31 3.21 ERA 7-6 4.15 ERA 80-76 4.84 ERA 42-32 4.35 ERA 80-96 4.89 ERA TEAM B 97-66 3.83 ERA 82-68 4.44 ERA 48-28 4.37 ERA 100-105 4.34 ERA 0-0 -- ERA i have listed the starting staffs for two teams above and the career numbers of each member of the staff. team a certainly has a more dominant #1 starter but overall team b seems to have a deeper rotation based on these numbers with the possible expception of the unknown at the #5 starter since he is a rookie. as you have probably already guessed team a is the twins and team b is the sox. you cant tell me on paper that the sox don't have talent and the potential to be a very good starting rotation still. the numbers tell me they can. now all things considered if i had to pick between those staffs based solely on these numbers its a toss-up. so if you are telling me that the twins starting staff outperforms the sox starting staff by a whole run this year then there is certainly something wrong

2000- 4.66 ERA 2001- 4.55 ERA 2002- 4.53 ERA average ERA of 4.58 pre-coop 2003- 4.17 ERA 2004- 4.91 ERA 2005- 3.61 ERA 2006- 4.61 ERA in his first 4 full seasons with the sox cooper has compiled an average ERA of 4.33, which certainly is an improvement over the 3 years prior to his arrival but not nearly as great as alot of people on here seem to think im afraid. good thing for 2005 otherwise he would be right on course with the previous 3 years. twins win 7-2 what else is new they pick up washed-up ramon ortiz and all of a sudden he is a solid #3? sure don't hear about rick anderson complaining about lack of pitching talent even after losing both radke and liriano...just saying

QUOTE(knightni @ Apr 4, 2007 -> 08:32 PM) Yeah. I guess he just stopped BELIEVING. yea im actually quite the optimist generally but its awfully hard to be optomistic when you see whats going on with our pitching, even you have to admit that QUOTE(Jimbo @ Apr 4, 2007 -> 08:30 PM) Im telling you we need like a private soxtalk forum for the approved posters. These new guys are such crap. and why would you go there?

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Apr 4, 2007 -> 08:05 PM) If I were the hitting coach of the Yankees, they'd score 900 runs this year. Seriously. And if they had the greatest pitching coach in the history of the universe, it'd be a miracle if their team ERA was under 4.00. Talent means so much more in baseball than coaching, and right now, the White Sox rotation is just flat out not that talented and they've faced a very talented offense that has looked very good. In other words, I don't think you understand what you are arguing. how can you say they arent talented? how did they go from a consesus top pitching staff pre-2006 season talent-wise to where they arent even talented anymore? i know they lost freddy but you cant tell me thats the difference. they got crappy because both mark buehrle and jose contreras have fallen apart since post-all star break last season, which exactly proves my initial statement

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Apr 4, 2007 -> 07:45 PM) Our offense then was tits then in 04 because if you look at our overall numbers we scored a lot of runs, and hit a lot of homers. But then again, we got rid of 3 of our offensive punch because we were sick and tired of scoring 12 runs in one game and then getting 2 hit for the next few. We had a chance to score a lot more runs today, hitting a home run is great and all. But to me hitting the ball for a single to drive in the tying or winning runs is just as important. When we fail to score because we give away outs, or more imporantly strike out. We had 8 ks against a bunch of guys who dont strikeout people. i agree to an extent but any time you score 7 runs you should win 90-95% of those games. how many games do the twins lose when they score 7 runs? just saying

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Apr 4, 2007 -> 07:37 PM) If the Sox are scoring 6 runs per game because Jim Thome, Paul Konerko, and Jermaine Dye are unstoppable, like last year...but then the guys we need to create a more balanced attack, i.e. Anderson, Erstad, Uribe, Podsednik, Pierzynski wind up struggling with the bats...that says something. yes that would be a problem but so far this season anderson is 1-1, erstad is 3-6, uribe is 2-7, pods is 0-4 and pierzynski is 2-7 (8-25 combined) so that hasn't been a problem through the first two losses and you cant tell me coop doesnt have anything to work with. that starting staff still is fully capable of being an above average staff talent-wise and the bullpen has potentially dominant stuff

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Apr 4, 2007 -> 07:32 PM) Which one of them has more to work with? this isnt a question of who has more to work with, it's a matter of results. and if the sox are scoring 6 runs a game while allowing a 5.7 team ERA coop will be in trouble and walker wont

QUOTE(Wanne @ Apr 4, 2007 -> 07:14 PM) Walker goes WAAAAAY before Coop goes. how does walker go before coop if our offense scores 6 runs a game?

im not saying that i am advocating he gets fired i am just saying it is a real possibility if things continue the way they are right now and if anything else he needs to change his approach and light a fire under these guys a##es. he cant continue to tell me javy pitched well when he goes 6 innings and allows 5 runs like he did much of last year when i heard him talking on the radio. he needs these guys to man up and accept some responsibility for poor performances. and that is an attitude adjustment, something a coach can have an impact on.

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Apr 4, 2007 -> 06:44 PM) so why would you fire a good coach then? i dont know ask the white sox why they fired tony larussa

QUOTE(Greg The Bull Luzinski @ Apr 4, 2007 -> 06:35 PM) I think that if he spent less time calling the Mike North Morning show, and more time teaching our pitchers some things, we would be in better shape. well if you have heard him on the north show the second half of last year or this year you notice a much different man than the one from 2005 and the first half of 06. you can tell he snaps much more quickly and is actually very defensive to most things north says (surprise, surprise). either way this shows me that he too has some worries in his own mind if nothing else QUOTE(Soxfest @ Apr 4, 2007 -> 06:38 PM) That is wrong.....................Fire Coop he would have a job in 15 seconds. Lay off Coop! it wouldnt be the first time a good coach/manager has been fired and it won't be the last.

QUOTE(zenryan @ Apr 4, 2007 -> 06:19 PM) people are acting as if this has only been a 2 game problem. guess no one remembers 2006 no i mentioned that previously. thats what it is so concerning there is a trend developing and its seeming to get worse before it gets better QUOTE(Wanne @ Apr 4, 2007 -> 06:27 PM) That's ridiculous. Not like Coop wouldn't be snatched up in all of 3.5 seconds. Can Coop hold everybody's hand for offseason routines to see if they're are in 100% shape? Can Coop get into guys heads and control their mental states? Does Coop actually make the crappy pitches? Please...get a grip. i didn't say that i believe it is all his fault because i agree that a large degree of the blame falls on the players. but lets put it this way he isnt helping his own cause and coaches are judged based on the performance of their players, how else can you evaluate a coach? right or wrong, if things continue to go poorly for this staff cooper WILL take a large amount of blame which could very well result in his release

QUOTE(StrangeSox @ Apr 4, 2007 -> 05:57 PM) Just off the top of my head, what about what he did with Thronton? what did he do with thornton? the guy did have one good season, i will give him that. but until he strings two or three good seasons together i wouldnt call him a huge success. if he reverts to 2006 neal cotts form this season what good is he? QUOTE(iamshack @ Apr 4, 2007 -> 05:58 PM) Cooper never deserved all the credit he got for the staff being great in 05', and doesn't deserve as much of the blame as some would like to place on him now, but certainly, he is nowhere near having his job in jeopardy at this point, and wouldn't even if the staff were to struggle into June. This is a knee-jerk reaction. i have to disagree, right or wrong, his job will be in jeopardy if the sox pitching staff is in the bottom 3 of the AL come june

sorry just a little fired up i mean this is just pathetic my confidence in this staff is less than that of a staff like the orioles right now

This guy went from savior to now being on the verge of having his job in jeporady in a matter of a year and a half. Following the 2005 season his name was one of the hottest out there as far as pitching coaches are concerned. I can even recall hearing rumors that the Yankees were trying to get him. Well, last year he deserved some slack because the team was coming off a championship but this year I think there will be very little slack and if this pitching staff continues to struggle into the month of May and June I wouldn't be surprised to see Coop let go. It is hard to fathom a pitching staff that was so solid in '05 look so mediocre last year and potentially BAD this year. What happened? And again not all the blame can be placed on the pitching coach because the players still have to perform but it's never a good sign when your players are performing worse and worse each time out and no longer progressing

so nobody has answered the initial question, does anybody know?

Question: What's the worst opening day start by a White Sox pitcher? Jose's 1 IP 7 hits 7 ER 1 BB 1 K has got be top 3 at least

QUOTE(RME JICO @ Mar 29, 2007 -> 01:13 PM) I think Iguchi's numbers will also get better over time (more HR's, less K's). How many of those K's were after he took two strikes only to watch Pods stay at first? well not many last year considering pods was hardly ever on base...plus when you say iguchi's numbers will get better over time i'm not wholely convinced of that. He is 32 years old, so from a physical standpoint he is actually on the decline; however, as he continues to learn the AL pitchers and the league in general that should help him. but overall i don't expect him to do much more this year or any in the future that greatly exceed the results we have seen from him in his first 2 seasons with the sox.

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Mar 29, 2007 -> 11:36 AM) David Eckstein has always had trouble drawing walks, atleast that was the case when he played in the American League, not to tough to do that in the NL Central. He has the worst infield arm in the history of baseball as well as lackluster range, yeah he does hustle the guy's a grinder I wouldn't expect and less and Timo Perez and Scott Spezio also have 2 world series rings, so yeah I don't care. If you're going to pay a secondbaseman $5M a year I'll take Iguchi over Eck every day of the week. not to turn this into a thread about david eckstein but this man has been overlooked his whole career and personally i think he would be a real solid 2nd baseman, even though he is a below average SS. also, eckstein isnt as bad offensively as you might think. now, if you are the kind of guy that only looks at OPS and SLG then you might think hes a terrible hitter but the guy is a .283 career hitter with a .351 OB compared to iguchi's .280/.347. plus, iguchi strikes out way too much as a #2 hitter for me. over 100 k's back to back years. eckstein really is a little pest at the plate and hardly ever K's. he's a damn tough out always fighting off pitches and making the pitchers work extra hard to get him out. thats the kind of thing that isnt always reflected in statistics but is a very, very important part of the game

yea they are saying day to day but my guess is they wont rush him just to start opening day. in fact, they may wait for him to start the home opener next friday against seattle. they definitely dont wan to risk losing him for longer than a week or two considering what happened to him at the start of last season

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/spring2007/n...tory?id=2815871

anyone know when single game tickets go on sale?

yea i mean in all reality he really didnt do much to hurt or help the bears in this game. this game was won soley on their defense and special teams (maynard was big all day). yes he did have a nice drive to lead to the berrian TD but he also missed a gimme TD to clark early in the game and just because you are being blitzed doesnt mean you cant make a play and have to throw it away every time you are blitzed so i wouldnt use that as an excuse for incompletes

i bet that line holds pretty steady at 7 usually opening lines pretty well depict the closing lines in the NFL and 7 points is a lot to give a team that only lost 3 games this year playing on neutral territory

actually it looks like the early line is indy -7