caulfield12

The one thing the Tigers can always do well is sense when there's blood in the water..."how are we going to lose tonight?" the White Sox players and staff must be thinking at this point...and take advantage of those situations and go for the sweep, instead of being satisfied with 2/3. What are the odds Kinsler also doesn't steal? Rumors around the DET clubhouse that Samardzija has been hanging his slider...and everyone's waiting to jump on that fastball.

That was quick. An error already. SIGH.

As long as there's no perceived favoritism shown to the students that do that....and you might want to think about paying for gas/transport/"tip" if the student does it on a more regular basis. At international schools in China, it's even trickier, because you get invited out by students and their parents all the time. A lot of teachers accept these free lunches and dinners, and they also give a number of expensive gifts as well (usually to female teachers). Slippery slope.

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/122308730/jh...-prospects-list Article today at mlb.com about the top international prospects...J.Ortiz, Guerrero, Tatis (Jr.), etc.

QUOTE (flavum @ May 5, 2015 -> 05:04 PM) A couple pregame Hahn clips... The one common point in both clips...it has to get started or turned around pretty soon. You could see he was trying to come up for reasons/rationale for the baserunning and defensive mistakes, lots of theories out there.

2011 5-13 (3-6 at USCF, 2-7 at DET) 2012 6-12 (5-4 at USCF, 1-8 at DET) 2013 7-12 (4-6 at USCF, 3-6 at DET) 2014 9-10 (4-5 at USCF, 5-5 at DET) Overall since 2011, head-to-head 27-47 (11-26 at DET, 16-21 at USCF)

The White Sox: Rank this one under a surprisingly bad start. Nobody in the AL had a better winter than the White Sox, who acquired Jeff Samardzija, David Robertson and Adam LaRoche. Yet here they are, ranked last in the majors in runs scored, 25th in on-base percentage (.296) and 27th in slugging (.341). Then they got their Bermuda shorts blown off over the weekend in Minnesota (well, had they been wearing those ugly old 1976 Sox Bermuda shorts…). For real? No. Expect better things from the White Sox. For one thing, they've endured a funky schedule—rained out in Kansas City on April 25, then having two games postponed in Baltimore because of the riots on April 27 and 28, causing them to play just one game in four days. Just out of spring training, timing is very fragile for everyone this early in the season, and the White Sox will get better. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2453770...redo-we-believe And it's been a sloppy start—witness the fourth inning of Sunday's win over Toronto, when the Indians surrendered six runs and Jason Kipnis said afterward, "We're not good enough to play that stupid." They are not. They also are too good to play that stupid very often. For real? This poor start is not, no. Cleveland is too good not to be a factor in the AL Central race this summer.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2454389...on-on-letterman Will Ferrell brings back Harry Caray to Letterman, had to laugh with references to the 80's and 90's Cubs.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/b...ed-2/order/true The White Sox are leading the AL in putting the ball into the outfield versus hitting it on the ground. Neither team walks very much, but the Royals put the ball in play a lot more....especially to the middle of the diamond. Also, the Royals are lowest in the league in strikeouts.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 5, 2015 -> 08:41 AM) Gee, guess what, they came back without Frank Thomas and without David Wells. They were 15 games out on May 25th. 4 weeks later they were 8 out. I guess Detroit is in no danger of showing its age. And for all the Madison Bumgarner away from a WS, they were also an unlikely 4 run come back in the 8th inning of the wild card game from us ever having to hear how a team that had not made the playoffs for 30 years is now the model all teams should follow. The Royals haven't won squat. And the example was a team that finished 2 games out of the playoffs if they were determined like they are today. And the example was 14-29 vs. 8-14. That would be another 6-15 stretch to tie. That team had the benefit of the doubt being one removed from an amazing and entertaining season (and playoff appearance) filled with brawls and offense. This year's team, seven years removed from 2008, is going to be abandoned by 80% of fans if they fall to 14-29. You might have to change your name to Dick Quixote by the end of the September. Victor Martinez and Verlander are breaking down and they're still in first place and 8 games over .500. They also have one of the best pitchers in Price (he came out and dominated KC on the road when they'd lost the first two of a four game series), a very good 2 guy in Anibal Sanchez and Soria has been excellent. Offensively, JD Martinez was very hot before cooling, Gose is improved, Cespedes is on fire, Castellanos has warmed up....Iglesias still has one of the top 20-30 OPS lines in all of baseball and plays stellar defense, Rajai Davis is a very solid fourth outfielder....then you have Kinsler and Cabrera at the top of their games. So a very dangerous and deep offense despite Avila and Martinez...and not all that old, other than Victor and Justin. Leading or close to leading the AL in stolen bases. They're a lot more athletic than some of those plodding, one base at a time teams we remember from almost a decade ago.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 5, 2015 -> 08:21 AM) I am not suggesting firing anybody. I have suggested the White Sox ride out the storm. I am actually one of the dopes that thinks 140 games is enough to get things turned around. I pointed out the 2001 White Sox .They started out 8-19, and at one point were 14-29. They still won 83 games. Jerry Manuel didn't get fired. Gee, that's probably because Frank Thomas was out with an achilles' problem, Wells was out for nearly the whole season....Jose Canseco was playing regularly and we were breaking in like 8 rookie or 2nd year pitchers. But totally similar situation with 2015...if you consider it wasn't anything alike. And the example given was a team that didn't come close to making the playoffs. The Indians that year were starting to show their age and the Twins were the huge surprise out of the gate. You didn't have a four time AL Central Division team with a huge payroll and the best hitter in baseball, as well as the team that came one out and Madison Bumgarner away from winning the World Series.

Well, if we selectively decide not to include anyone whose stats we don't like or whose numbers were accumulated in blowouts, then the bullpen is great. I suppose the retort will be that Don Cooper is responsible for the starters exclusively and that our bullpen coach and catcher/s are the reason that Robertson's so good. Wait, he was actually pretty good before he came to Chicago, good enough to be one of the top 3-5 highest paid closers in baseball. I guess we have to throw out the outing Petricka had too, because we were losing....and anything Drabek did, so basically the bullpen is only good when we're winning or tied. 11th/14 BAA 6th/14 OPS 9th/14 WHIP 9th/14 Defense Independent Pitching

QUOTE (Tex @ May 5, 2015 -> 06:51 AM) If the front office is to blame then we knew from the beginning that there wasn't the talent on the field to compete. Obviously Robin wasn't given the talent he needs to be a playoff contending team. Only fools and people who drink the koolaid thought this team would be better than .500. So we keep Robin, because this can't be his fault without the talent, and replace the front office with guys that can actually put a talented team on the field. If you went back to the predictions thread and averaged it out, I'm sure you would come up with something like 83-79 or 84-78 as the mean or median number. Very few were picking over 86, but there were just as many in the 86-89 range as 76-79.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 5, 2015 -> 07:18 AM) LOL. You said the season was over 3 weeks ago. Just like fangraphs is currently saying the odds of winning the division are 2% and odds of making it as a wildcard are 3%. (On the plus side, we're still rated ahead of Minnesota somehow, despite this past weekend, and Texas). You have Dave Cameron and sportswriters/media now speculating about Ventura's job status and dealing Samardzija and Ramirez. If the season isn't close to being over, you're not very familiar with poor White Sox starts that ended in the playoffs outside of 1983, when there were fewer teams to pass in the AL West (3 versus 4). You also said "this bullpen is nails!" Which one is closer to being accurate, the White Sox will miss the playoffs for the 8th consecutive season or the bullpen will finish in the Top 3-5 in the AL in any statistical category you care to choose (ERA, WHIP, FIP, etc.)

http://chicago.suntimes.com/baseball/7/71/...stand-white-sox On Monday, fans already were calling for a managerial change. The Sox’ front office was not a happy place Monday, but firing Ventura isn’t likely under chairman Jerry Reinsdorf’s watch, the big-league executive said. ‘‘[Adam] LaRoche, [Alexei] Ramirez, Eaton, [Jose] Abreu, [John] Danks, Sale and Samardzija need to pick it up,’’ he said. ‘‘There is no way Jerry Reinsdorf is going to fire Robin Ventura. He’s too loyal.’’ Great, we're probably headed for a "lame duck," lost season. If nothing else, a new manager when the team is psychologically out of the race could at least give the front office a better read on how the team will perform going forward...how much of it is lack of talent/aging veterans and how much of it is attributable to some other variable or "human factor."

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-leag...-001755837.html Is it time for the White Sox to fire Robin Ventura? This article argues no, he needs more time and patience. Over that period (2012-2014), Ventura hasn't really shown any glaring strategies as a manager. His teams haven't led the league in sacrifice bunt attempts or hit and runs. He's pretty boring, actually, but that's fitting considering his personality. In this case, though, that laid back style hurts Ventura in the eyes of the fans. With the slow start, people are going to be looking to Ventura to fire up his team with some type of impassioned speech. That's just not something he's going to do, especially in public or with the media. It's easy to say, "this team needs a fire lit under them," but it's impossible to know whether a fiery tirade is suddenly going to make Adam LaRoche hit better, or get the defense to stop making errors. http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-leag...-175528317.html Top 5 managers on the "hot seat," a bit ominous that Ventura's first, and followed next by Price after his expletive-filled tirade...also Gibbons, Redmond (Loria's managers are always in constant danger) and Matt Williams of the disappointing Nats.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/batting/_/sor.../qualified/true The problem isn't that Flowers sucks and Micah's a rookie (that's not unexpected to any Sox fan)....it's Eaton, Ramirez and Gillaspie (to a lesser extent) all sporting 575-581 OPS numbers and Johnson/Eaton also having ZERO positive impact (actually, a net negative) on the basepaths. Then you have Cabrera hitting for average but not much power and few walks. Of course, that's getting decent or better than expected numbers from Avi and a bit less from Abreu.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ May 4, 2015 -> 11:12 PM) The most likely scenario is simply that the players have been playing like s***, because history tells us that players often, for no good reason, play like s***. The good news is that those players will probably stop playing like s*** at some point soonish, but the bad news is that we still have all these losses in the bank. But yeah, you're right -- the manager seems like the scapegoat that's the easiest to remove, and since we don't really have any idea how to tell what type of impact the manager is having, we can find hope in the fact that no one can prove that it ISN'T him. Therefore, RV is an easy target. Which then morphs into the.....JR/KW/Hahn triumvirate, and then who's actually the one deciding what. And of course we don't have any answers there, either, just more conjecture. So then everyone has their own agenda, depending on something simple as like/dislike or perception of the various individuals involved...which leads to more endless arguments where nobody has a way to "prove" anything beyond their own conjecture and tidbits of "insider" knowledge from time to time. It's one major source of frustration with the entire board. Knowing who to hold accountable.

Cubs have managed to blow 5 and 4 run leads...bullpen torched. Down now 10-8 in the bottom of the 7th in StL. That's a back-breaker. How many times do you score 7 runs against Carlos Martinez and still lose?

For the most part, I agree. The biggest questions were probably whether Robertson was worth all that money, would Samardzija be willing to sign an extension, was Duke a fluke and how much did Cabrera and LaRoche have left in the tank (as those last two, in particular, were "win now" moves)...even adding someone like Bonifacio to the bench at that salary (which now seems to have been premature). Still, it's about winning and losing. In the end, it doesn't matter what percentage of fans agreed about adding Peavy, Rios, Dunn, Samardzija, Cabrera, Robertson, etc. Usually the smaller, under the radar moves are the ones that have turned out the best for the White Sox over the last 15 years or so.

They can get on long winning streaks, but that probably means Rodon at the back end, and obviously our TOP 3 has to get their acts together. Pretty obvious stuff, I know. At any rate, the Noesi/Danks situation is one of many blocking success right now...but not as much as Sale/Samardzija/Q pitching like garbage.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ May 4, 2015 -> 08:24 PM) Possibly. But we don't know, really. It could be a result of poor team prep on the manager's side, or it could just be that those guys are sucking. That's why I've always stayed off the "FIRE RV" bandwagon -- I don't like to draw conclusions without evidence to believe them. Just because it's plausible doesn't mean it's any more likely than any other outcome. I prefer to blame the players, because I KNOW that they can affect their own performance and preparation. Because believing the players are all terrible (getting worse) or than Hahn made a slew of mistakes (other than Robertson) is just too terrible to contemplate. It's psychology 101. We want to believe that a new manager could come in (just like 2012) and instantly make this team competitive again. Otherwise, we're talking about another half decade of struggles/irrelevance, new GM, etc.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 4, 2015 -> 02:19 PM) Anything those in bold contribute at the big league level would be considered a plus, in my opinion. If those 6 are considered the future.......then yikes!!!!!!! Just to be clear, I meant Erik Johnson and not Micah Johnson.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 4, 2015 -> 05:28 PM) The White Sox believe that the best thing for the development of a prospect is to push them until they reach a level where they struggle. Once they're at that point, they believe that is when the struggling prospect can be worked with to correct those issues. IMO their ultimate test of this is Courtney Hawkins. I personally am unconvinced by this philosophy and I don't think the evidence is that it has been successful for this franchise at all. In fact, I feel the guys who actually are making the big leagues and having success are the guys who had someone else in their way and were forced to stay down in the minors longer - Semien got stuck there last year once Gillaspie and Beckham were back, Eduardo Escobar got a full year in Charlotte before coming up as a bench player and then was worked in the minors by the Twins again before he had a really solid 2014 campaign. OTOH we're watching Micah who leapfrogged AAA almost completely unsurprisingly need time to adapt to the bigs. That's why I have SOME hopes for Erik Johnson, although they're not going to return to pre-2014 levels. Same with Matt Davidson, to a lesser extent. And realistically, if you look at how long it took for Crede and Rowand to become everyday players, over a 2-3 year timeframe at the big league level, that's the ideal way to do it. The other big examples had fatal flaws (Borchard), couldn't hit a fastball (Fields/Viciedo) or control the strike zone and swinging at pitches out of it, couldn't hit well enough to justify his defense (Anderson) or just failed for a number of mystery reasons, like Beckham. With Beckham, you can say he changes or changed mechanics too frequently, lacking in confidence, overthinking, went through too many position changes, was never allowed to experience failure and overcome it at the minor league level...or maybe simply the fact that a lot of college hitters can look great (especially with aluminum bats) but it doesn't translate at the next level with superior competition (see Alex Gordon for another example of how long it took for THE best college hitter to adapt, part of it was also the pressure to be "the next George Brett" and play 3B). Or the "Ozzie hated him" theory some have used with Anderson/Beckham. Fallback option.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 4, 2015 -> 02:08 PM) If this team continues down the current path, then he's going to be #2 on my list of people who are in the way. No matter how many times you guys say this wasn't "all in", he bet a lot on this season. Traded for a 1 year rental player, spent $50 million this season, basically blew any chance of FA spending in 2016 if the 2015 team wasn't competitive. At the least we were supposed to get close. He bought into Sale and Abreu and Ventura and the supporting cast being able to be right there this year and as of right now it looks like we spent $50 million to tread water. And the timing of that next wave of younger players (Anderson, Hawkins, Montas, Danish, Johnson and Davidson hopefully) puts them in a difficult situation where....as has happened over and over again the last 15 years....there's simply not enough patience for "on the job" training because of the "all-in/win now" mentality the fanbase demands in order to attend games regularly or consistently. They can't afford to break in all those players at key positions in 2016-17 and still compete. Which means trades and/or FA. Except if the additional resources are cut off, the ONLY way to compete is to hit possible Samardzija and Alexei Ramirez trades over the Dan Ryan Expressway and into Kirby Puckett's old backyard.