caulfield12

Alexei Ramirez might disagree with that assessment. This year's the first real test of that since 2012, when the team obviously wore down during the stretch run. Guys like Eaton, Abreu, Conor...and most of the pitching staff, as a close to .500 team became a pretty bad/below average one. The other problem here is separating for factors like Herm Schneider, or the fact that the bench has been very weak...thus not providing many legit options when resting regulars (see Leury Garcia). And "pretty decent" doesn't exactly fill one with confidence, lol.

They would be better off having a Bachelor show from all the actresses on Cinemax's Banshee. Lili Simmons, Meaghan Rath, Trieste Kelly Dunn, Ivana Milicevic, Odette Yustman (Annable), etc.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Feb 24, 2015 -> 09:28 AM) The Bachelor has officially eliminated the good looking girls from his show and now is focused on two girls that may actually be open to moving to Iowa. Riveting stuff. Because no beautiful girl would ever move to rural Iowa, unless she was married to the Univ. of Iowa or ISU head basketball or football coach...like Andy Enfield at USC. Just kidding. I was reading somewhere that the current bachelor was a millionaire, but I'm assuming that was mostly based on the value of his farmland? From what I understand, one of the best-looking girls was in Playboy and only seemed interested in using the show for promoting herself (surprise, surprise). At any rate, the Chicago girl could work at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, so she SHOULD be the favorite.

I wish the White Sox would try to get their hitters away from wrapping their bat too much behind their head and back towards the pitcher...unless you're Gary Sheffield, Eric Davis or Julio Franco, you have to be incredibly strong or quick-wristed to be effective with that approach.

LDF has been a bit like the Greg "Little Bulldog" Hibbard of SoxTalk these days, haha.

QUOTE (LDF @ Feb 24, 2015 -> 09:18 AM) i like the idea of a nice group of pitchers in the pen. this may be the best group the sox have had in a long time. as of right now, they may even have more in the wings, via thru the off season trades. in addition the top prospects, those who were also drafted. now this would be an embarrassment of riches. now here is where Hahn comes in, i know the sox will have more of an idea towards the end of spring training, but maybe Hahn can trade some of them. use them to continue to build the system. positional players, a catcher, would be the main focus of those trades. any ideas?? Not really. Nobody's going to give you much at all for a Putnam, Petricka, Webb or Guerra at the start of the season...they're way too unproven. What will be more compelling to watch is whether Rodon, Montas or Danish end up in the pen (especially the last two names) in August and September. Sanburn's another arm to monitor, if he's 100% healthy. As it is, there aren't a lot of veteran arms down there. We're waiting on Crain and Nathan Jones...then you have guys like Cleto and Surkamp with pretty minimal value. If you were another team, why would you want Chris Beck or Brad Penny, for example? You can find them on the waiver wire for practically nothing.

QUOTE (LDF @ Feb 24, 2015 -> 09:11 AM) i do have faith in Danks and i believe he may find a way to get the job done. he is a throw back to the old school pitchers, but i guess, we as fans will see how spring trng pans out. Spring training is meaningless for Danks at this point. Looking at his stats through May 15 will be the most important indicator. I'm sure if he's throwing harder we'll hear Hawk gushing about how he's going to win 15+ games and be an anchor to the back of the rotation, results in AZ doesn't mean much because of the desert air and faster sun-baked infields. Still, it should have less of an effect on his change and fastball than curves and sliders.

That Samardzija article called back to mind the interaction of a "stat geek" and Hosmer/Moustakas. http://www.hardballtimes.com/learning-the-...-the-clubhouse/ There's a steep learning curve for the "sabes" (I love that Greg-ism) people to go through when interacting with professional athletes using their statistics-driven language. Athletes can sniff out a "poser" a million miles away, and they're often not as nice as someone like Mark Teahen or Jim Thome would be about it. You have to build a relationship and get respect from an athlete first..or at least give them some pertinent statistical information which helps them improve their games (rather than criticizing it).

QUOTE (farmteam @ Feb 24, 2015 -> 08:12 AM) Watched CITIZENFOUR last night. Pretty good, lots of context. Snowden has a God complex, but in general I come down on the Patriot side of te "traitor or patriot?" debate. Of course we didn't have access to all those hours in Hong Kong. Naturally, he would be a little paranoid. He wasn't very pleasant with some of the people calling on the phone, especially the hotel staff. Maybe some of the "getting behind the story" stuff seemed to be too self-serving, as he knew eventually he was going to be outed at some point and become THE story (Kill the Messenger, which is a much better movie with Jeremy Renner, ironically). The way he treated his g/f, considering they were in an almost decades-long relationship, seemed pretty insensitive. We're left thinking about him being mainly concerned with how he looked on tv, whether his goatee was shaved or clipped to give him the right look....one of the scenes that stuck out was when he started getting attention and then all of a sudden he's slicking his hair back like he's Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. If any of us were in that position, it's hard to say what we would do. He already had the past examples of Assange, Daniel Manning, etc. So surely he could anticipate becoming a household name and celebrity for 15 minutes at least. Whether he's actually "living the dream" and what he's doing in Moscow currently is a different question altogether. It would have been interesting had the director interviewed his parents, girlfriend and some of his classmates back from his university days...that would have provided a clearer picture of the person. At any rate, compared to documentaries in the past, this was one of the weakest Oscar winners.

QUOTE (glangon @ Feb 24, 2015 -> 08:45 AM) It's all very well to say he'll be fine but the only way to deal with this is to look at what went wrong in the 12 games where he gave up the runs. Was his arm tired? was he on short rest? Did Robin leave him in too long and not go to the pen quickly enough. If Coops can work with him and reduce either the number of games where he is terrible or the amount of runs that he gives up when he is not pitching well, then he has a chance of becoming much better, however if Coops can't "fix" some of those 12 games, then he will remain what he is, an overpaid 4th starter. It was mostly location, the fact that there wasn't as much of a differentiation in pitch speeds compared to previous years, leaving a lot of pitches up in the strike zone (which is obviously mechanics as well)...getting behind in counts and not having the stuff to miss bats unless his change-up was on that day. Unless he's throwing 91-93 like in the past, he has to feature much better command and get ahead more frequently. It's simple, Mark Buehrle's tried and true formula, but of course it's not in reality. Working at a faster pace might help, too, as he really slows down when he gets out of rhythm and it exacerbates his struggles. Limiting pitch counts (which is affected by not getting as many swings and misses) should help, but at this point it is what it is.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Feb 24, 2015 -> 08:10 AM) Of those that qualified for the ERA title last year: By ERA, the fourth worst pitcher in the majors was Hector Noesi. The fifth worst was John Danks. By FIP, the third worst pitcher in the majors was Hector Noesi. The fourth worst was John Danks. By xFIP, the second worst pitcher in the majors was John Danks. The tenth was Hector Noesi. By fWAR, the sixth worst pitcher in the majors was Hector Noesi. The ninth was John Danks. TL;DR No matter how you slice it, both sabermetrically and traditionally, John Danks and Hector Noesi were among the bottom ten pitchers in the entire major leagues last year. And if you remove his SEA and TEX numbers?

Where is Brady Aiken these days? IMG Academy in Florida? Juco? Independent League? It's hard to find any information about his whereabouts.

QUOTE (Brian @ Feb 24, 2015 -> 05:48 AM) The movie was very awkward and had some scenes that hinted at it. Carrell was on Stern when the movie was first released and even said something to the effect that there were rumors of his sexuality and some scenes were done to give that unsure feeling about it. http://articles.philly.com/1996-02-13/news...tcher-dan-chaid Seems that unless they open up that agreement with Metzger, the full truth will never be known. Right now, it's still conjecture and hearsay with no evidence or proof backing it up.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 24, 2015 -> 07:34 AM) Do you think John Danks sucked last year? Noesi's White Sox ERA was 0.05 lower, and his FIP was higher. The emergence of Hector Noesi is very overblown. How much did the White Sox pay Noesi last year? And by how much did he exceed relatively modest expectations? To use Hector Noesi, a guy released twice in one month...as a bar/benchmark/standard for comparing to John Danks is a bit beside the point. If both of those guys produce between the levels of last season and what Rienzo/Carroll produced, the White Sox will have a tough time competing unless Rodon takes the world by storm starting in May. Neither one were very good, but factoring in salary and performance, Noesi was 100% adequate as a 5th starter. It was the ineffective trio of Danks/Carroll/Rienzo that pulled the rotation down the most.

So what is really going on? Corporate profits have soared as a share of national income, but there is no sign of a rise in the rate of return on investment. How is that possible? Well, it’s what you would expect if rising profits reflect monopoly power rather than returns to capital. As for wages and salaries, never mind college degrees — all the big gains are going to a tiny group of individuals holding strategic positions in corporate suites or astride the crossroads of finance. Rising inequality isn’t about who has the knowledge; it’s about who has the power. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/23/opinion/...top-span-region Part of the reason is "tricking" the American people into believing that the biggest issue is educational reform. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/opinion/...ntial-race.html Another part of the equation is the undue influence of PAC's, soft money, the Koch Brothers, etc. There's a growing concern as well about how much influence foreign powers will have on a future White House based on their donations to the Clintons' non-profit foundation. Sure, we publish stories about the dizzying, obscene heights of spending by major donors, like one written in The Times last month by Nicholas Confessore. He noted that the Koch brothers had drawn up a budget of $889 million for the 2016 election cycle. ... We report, as we did in January, on how well or poorly Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz performed when they spoke at a gathering put together by the Kochs in Southern California. But we don’t flag the oddity of these auditions, the chilling bizarreness of the way the road to the White House winds not only through the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary but also through plutocrats’ posh retreats.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Feb 24, 2015 -> 12:01 AM) Simply naming the guys he signed isn't much of an argument. What are you basing all of the success off of? Besides the fact that anything's going to be perceived as successful when you're comparing it to non-existent. Most are still not happy with the Nestor Molina deal. That was terrible. In general, the system is improving...slowly, gradually. Now if there's proof out there Paddy was a major part of the Avisail Garcia acquisitions, specifically identified Montas and Rondon from Boston...Cleto and Onelki Garcia, etc., then there would be more reason besides Micker Adolfo to be excited. The jury's still out. Also, if he had anything to do with Hector Noesi. If we want to measure success here, we have to look carefully at any Dominican and Venezuelan acquisitions, those are the two markets we were WAY behind in, and Asia as well (nothing since Takatsu and Iguchi). And, yes, Paddy's MAIN priority is 14-20 year old Latin American talent, but someone in his position should have his fingers in multiple pots.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2...tyrs-72-virgins For example, the whole idea of martyrs isn't attributable to the Koran. Nothing in the Koran specifically states that the faithful are allotted 72 virgins apiece. For this elaboration we turn to the hadith, traditional sayings traced with varying degrees of credibility to Muhammad. Hadith number 2,562 in the collection known as the Sunan al-Tirmidhi says, "The least [reward] for the people of Heaven is 80,000 servants and 72 wives, over which stands a dome of pearls, aquamarine and ruby." http://www.wvinter.net/~haught/Koran.html On the other hand, there's this... http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/023-violence.htm Unlike nearly all of the Old Testament verses of violence, the verses of violence in the Quran are mostly open-ended, meaning that they are not restrained by the historical context of the surrounding text. They are part of the eternal, unchanging word of Allah, and just as relevant or subjective as anything else in the Quran. The context of violent passages is more ambiguous than might be expected of a perfect book from a loving God, however this can work both ways. Most of today's Muslims exercise a personal choice to interpret their holy book's call to arms according to their own moral preconceptions about justifiable violence. Apologists cater to their preferences with tenuous arguments that gloss over historical fact and generally do not stand up to scrutiny. Still, it is important to note that the problem is not bad people, but bad ideology.

QUOTE (LDF @ Feb 23, 2015 -> 07:56 PM) i really enjoyed this, i was on the firing line but it was all good. bos is going to be tough. sox baseball. not everyone will have the same opinions. just remember one thing, sox in 2015.... http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-leag...-180845308.html Maybe this will make you feel better. Yankees fans furious they lost Moncada to the Red Sox, saying that it would never have happened with George Steinbrenner still running the team, he would be turning over in his grave, etc. Of course, if Moncada becomes a breakout star, they'll have to watch him beat them up on the field 19 times per season for at least six more years. Kris Medlen going on to have huge success with the Royals later this season and in 2016 would burn the Sox a lot more than anything Beachy does.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Feb 23, 2015 -> 05:37 PM) The Royals (of course) have talked about carrying 13 pitchers this year. http://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-colum...le10634720.html That's kind of a unique situation with Hochevar's recovery. It would make sense if the White Sox were bringing both Crain and Nathan Jones north for Opening Day, but that's of course entirely implausible. Odds are they end up with 7 and 4 bench players...Ventura will want to have a late-inning replacement for Avi if he continues to struggle defensively. Who knows, maybe he'll be decent this year.

Well, this thread has probably surpassed the number of pages on all other 29 teams' (including the Dodgers) websites devoted to the subject of Brandon Beachy. There's that. And yes, it was pretty silly to forget 2009 happened. I was too enamored with Gordon Beckham's golden flowing locks, lol. Maybe that's the curse of living and working in Thailand at that time, too many distractions. It happens to everyone, haha. But talking to Jeter, the Yankees’ shortstop, was different, Beckham said. He admits he was star-struck. “He was the only one who made me feel that way,” said Beckham, who is now with the Los Angeles Angels, “and I felt that way so much, I forgot how many outs there were.” The next batter hit a ground ball to Jeter, who threw to first for the second out. Beckham, still distracted from the conversation with Jeter, thought it was the final out. He wandered off third and handed his helmet to the third-base coach. Mark Teixeira saw that and threw to Alex Rodriguez, who tagged an embarrassed Beckham for the third out. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/sports/b...jeter.html?_r=0

QUOTE (LDF @ Feb 23, 2015 -> 07:33 PM) for the best actor category, i guess that was the right winner. i never saw the movie, so i can't based it on anything. did the actor deserved the oscar? i thought keaton or carrell would have won it. http://www.everything2.com/title/Winning+O...th+disabilities Technically, Keaton and Carrell also had disabilities (in their roles), especially DuPont. Unfortunately, being a billionaire in America (at least family wealth) allows one to be termed eccentric, ala Howard Hughes.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Feb 23, 2015 -> 06:31 PM) Is he banned currently? You might want to read his "interests" under the profile page.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 23, 2015 -> 12:34 PM) 2 of them were awful, actually. The other one turned out OK, but he was a bit wild. He all of a sudden became lights out as soon as he was traded. http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/gamelog/_/id...0/daniel-hudson I'll amend it, one really good, one so-so and one terrible. To say a game when you're taking an 8-3 lead into the top of the 5th inning and trying to get through it for your first major league win in your debut is "terrible," well, the team ended up winning the game 15-5 (against KC), so he didn't hurt the Sox...performing well enough for them to win in 2/3 games, which is all you can expect out of a rookie call-up.

QUOTE (LDF @ Feb 23, 2015 -> 12:12 PM) i can see how a hs prospect may be ideal, but with the possibility of hawkins future not panning out as expected. i think it will be college rt this draft. but pitcher or positional . i would love to hear the sox FO discussing this. it is going to be a fun season. There's at least a 50/50 chance that Tim Anderson ends up in the OF. The hopes are higher for him going forward at this point than Hawkins.

And Beachy's not a great example because the innings he could provide in the 2nd half could be contributed from a number of other sources. There's just no reliable track record with pitchers coming off so many injuries. The last thing the White Sox would want is a "rehabbing" pitcher thrown into the heat of a pennant race when every game counts. Their patience in the past lasted for exactly 3 Daniel Hudson starts, for example...and 2 of them were pretty good, actually.