caulfield12

Thompson was 3/4 and still at only .218. Wow. 8 homers and 42 RBI's on the season, at least he's making his hits count, there's that. Sanchez hitting .330 but OPS still under 800. Not easy to do.

QUOTE (South Side Fireworks Man @ Jun 8, 2012 -> 10:41 PM) If they want more fans in the stands, put better players on the field. It will be interesting to see if there's any type of bump up at all for Chris Sale starts. If I was a Sox fan in the US, there's no way I would go to a Floyd/Humber home game over a Sale or Peavy one at this point...if I had to choose just one game to attend all season.

QUOTE (South Side Fireworks Man @ Jun 8, 2012 -> 10:38 PM) Spot on. Bring Youkilis in here and bat him second. Move Dunn to fifth. Move Beckham back down to eighth. And anytime Alexei wants to take his head out of his ass will be fine with me. It's June, it's warm, no more excuses. And bring in that other righty reliever, bring up another bullpen arm from the minors, and let Santiago and Stewart start in the minors. Unless they're willing to take on more salary, how are they going to pull this move off? Trade Floyd, Thornton or Crain? Well, then that just opens up holes in other places, although I'm almost willing to give another starter like Quintana a chance. You'd hate to see them trade Mitchell just when he's finally coming into his own as a baseball player for a one year rental who's just as likely to produce like Manny Ramirez in 2010 than the Youkilis of old. Plus, defensively, he's far from a sure thing at this point in his career. Williams is in a tough position on this one. And I still don't believe the Red Sox will just give away Youkilis to a potential playoff rival this year.

QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Jun 8, 2012 -> 10:28 PM) Being a baseball player's so tough. How can they handle it? They went to bed at 5 a.m. and have to work at 7 p.m.? Oh, the humanity! Normally, they'd have to be there around 1 p.m. Probably they skipped all the early drills and BP and rolled in around 330-430 p.m. today. But if you really think players just show up at game time for any sport, well, I'm not sure what to say.

I just can't imagine them wanting to put all that pressure on Viciedo when he's finally comfortable defensively in the outfield and improving. It's just not fair to move a guy from 3B to 1B to RF to LF. I'd actually be more in favor of moving Beckham, and finding a 2B. But it's not a good move when you're taking away a Gold Glove caliber player at his position and creating two weaknesses. If you move Viciedo, we're still not going to get much production out of Jordan Danks, and we might end up setting back Viciedo's career (again).

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jun 8, 2012 -> 08:08 PM) They are 4-1 in the games Sale has started since then. 2 wins against LAA and Min they scored 6 runs and another against Seattle they scored 4 , so I would say there's a decent chance they win those. The other against TB was a 2-1 game, so I'm pretty sure, even if you call the Seattle game a loss, they would still be close to first. Try to be more accurate instead of dramatic, you know, pretty much the same thing for which you are ripping McNeil. But you're acting like there's a vacuum in which the team would have performed exactly the same way had Sale stayed in the pen. First of all, he probably would have at least one blown save, based on his only (very shaky) relief appearance. Second, there's just no way the whole team comes together offensively without the added confidence of knowing we had an ace back in our rotation that could go out and we'd win 80-85% of the games he started. Remember the effect that BAD 5th starters had on the White Sox from 2001-2004? You can assume all you want, that we would have won those games. We can argue back and forth. I can say that the Atlanta Braves would be hitting exactly the same with ANY hitting coach in baseball, and you can't prove I'm wrong. Just like there's no way to prove that the White Sox offense wouldn't have gone on this same tear with Walker as their hitting coach, yadda yadda.

Guess it didn't really matter that the Astros arrived at 4 a.m.

Game of the mentally weak, Gavin and Alexei making two critical errors (one physical, one mental) to give the Astros a gift run. Lots of hits tonight, but haven't come through in critical situations with runners in scoring position when we've had a chance to tie or take the lead. 11 hits to 5 for the Stros. Just one of those games that go against you when you're suddenly struggling as a team. Thankfully, we escaped with the win last night or it would feel a lot worse, plus Sale's going tmrw.

Wait, why is Jordan Danks playing LF? Viciedo got hurt when?

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 8, 2012 -> 08:40 PM) Ugh, Tigers with the lead now also. I still can't believe how terrible that Latos trade was for the Reds. He was throwing 97 earlier in that game and cruising. Once again, beware the PetCo Park Factor. I think that's 13 homers already this season surrendered, 11 of them at Great American Ballpark. He only had 16 a season for SD the last two years. There's some crazy streak with that park where there's been at least one homer hit in XX number of games, something like 41 in a row.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 8, 2012 -> 07:35 PM) Nice job getting us started ADA. Too bad Hudson couldn't beat I'll Have Another in a race. Secretariat and Seabiscuit would have a shot, too. Juan Pierre-itis. Usually sets in for speed players at age 32-34. Same with Chone Figgins.

Good scouting report there on Maxwell's arm. Either DeAza or McEwing or both deserve credit there.

White Sox and Cardinals both facing four run deficits now against Houston and the Indians. Need to peck away at that lead and get to their bullpen.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 8, 2012 -> 07:30 PM) Just a terrible, terrible pitch to Lowrie there. Not shocked he's lighting us up at all after this last offseason. What happened this offseason with Lowrie? Floyd=walks and cookies That should be the name of his bakery that he and wife starts after he retires, "Walks and Cookies"

Dammit Floyd, just when it seems like you were SORT of getting back into a groove again, yet another homer. All of them have been on cookies.

What are the odds of the leadoff walk scoring here? Had a great chance to tie or go ahead, now what will Gavin's response be? Don't want to look/hear/watch.

That sucks. Well, at least we made him work and Konerko hit the ball on the nose. Dunn didn't K, Beckham got a hit. There's that. 10 career grand slams for Paulie.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jun 8, 2012 -> 07:50 PM) Until this inning his pitch selection them has been brutal. He needs to use both curve and change more against them. Usually he feels around with the fastball and won't use his offspeed behind in the count -- also stays outside with everything for the most part. Been very predictable that the run of bad starts were all against VERY left handed teams. YOu mean run of bad starts IS, present tense...continuing.

Escaped from that near-disaster. Tigers back to within 1 against Latos, 4-3. CLE up early 2-0 over the Cardinales.

What a disappointment Gavin's turned out since the highs of 2008. Can understand fans not wanting to go to any game he starts. But part of this inning's on AJ, too.

The only good thing to happen tonight was they replaced Alexei Ramirez's stolen gold medal from the 2004 Olympics for the Cuban national team. Had a ceremony in LF, Jose Contreras flew in to present it to Ramirez personally. Guess Ramirez was crying and very touched that Jose came all the way from Philly to do this. One of the really good things about the Sox organization. Jose on Tanks: "He has the face of a child." Called him Lanzador (pitcher) in Spanish, guess Viciedo was timed at 90-91, similar to our draft pick Hawkins. Jose also told Farmer that Viciedo had terrible control on the mound. C'mon AJ, please move your body and block those balls. Just lazy there, didn't square his body up and use the proper blocking procedure. Tends to stab at the ball instead and its come back to bite him quite a few times in his career with the Sox.

Well, thanks to a Votto bomb off Porcello, at least the Reds are up 4-0 on the Tiggers early. Thanks for that wild pitch, too, Gavin.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jun 8, 2012 -> 05:14 PM) Oh gmab Caulfield, go ahead and dig up one of these arguments you are talking about. I don't remember any of this and it certainly has nothing to do with the current arguments within the last month. So you disagree with me that the White Sox would be in first place without Chris Sale? I'm still waiting for an example where you or Dick Allen were wrong. How many times does anyone admit they were wrong at SoxTalk? I was wrong that the White Sox were going to collapse into an abyss, but I'm not wrong with the subjunctive argument because I'll always believe had Sale stayed in the bullpen for the rest of this season and beyond that this season would have gone into complete rebuild mode. Since we can never know what would have happened, there's no "winning" or losing an argument, any more than I can quantitatively prove that Ozzie Guillen and KW didn't screw up Brian Anderson's career. People can believe whatever they want, in the end.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 8, 2012 -> 05:51 PM) 3 years of screwing with a kid's development stands a good shot at screwing up a lot of careers. So I'll say the same thing...many of us believed that KW messed up the development of Sale (specifically), Viciedo, Beckham...you can probably add Santiago and Morel to the list, but those are arguments for another time. The fact of the matter is that IF we had enough depth in our major league bullpen in 2010 and 2011, Chris Sale could have been building up his innings and arm strength to become a starter. 2010, fine, we were in the heat of a pennant race. At the very least, when it was pretty obvious we weren't going to compete last year after the 4-18 stretch in April and May and Dunn/Rios/Peavy clearly weren't going to pull out of it, he could have started at BIRM or CHAR for 2-3 months and then the final month with the White Sox. Or they could have just traded Buehrle and put Chris in the rotation. Last year was basically wasted.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jun 8, 2012 -> 04:34 PM) Then you should own it, instead of pointing fingers when others do it. Brian Anderson? WTF does that have to do with what we are talking about? I argued for years that he was a bust and was going to be a bust and nobody ever owned that they were wrong, either. They simply blamed Anderson's failures on Ozzie Guillen. Despite the fact that he was quickly out of baseball and never came close to making it as a pitcher or with another organization as an outfielder.