caulfield12

Guess I have to take the comment back about 3 runs = L I guess this more than anything points the finger at Danks' poor start and his new contract. Dunn now only 4 off last year's HR pace. It would be ironic if he had a season reminiscent of Albert Belle in 1997 or 98 or whatever year when what we really needed was his production LAST YEAR. PS: Now we can look back at Escobar and Beckham last inning and be even more aggravated. But at least happy for Dunn.

QUOTE (greg775 @ May 3, 2012 -> 09:58 PM) I just don't understand why we suck. We got a good leadoff hitter, good starting pitching except for Danks, good defense, adequate bullpen and yet we suck. Greg, I HOPE you're a better baseball fan than to ask a question like that. Once again, we're going to lose a game in which we scored 3 runs or less. We haven't won one all season. So inconsistent or below-average offense, 2-3 guys who have been among the 10-20 worst OPS guys in the entire major leagues, 2 Santiago blown saves, Danks pitching like crap, it's not that difficult to understand...along with the lack of consistent clutch hitting with RISP, and too many K's by our hitters. Our pitching should be fine, but the bullpen's currently VERY limited without Jesse Crain and with Santiago struggling.

QUOTE (greg775 @ May 3, 2012 -> 09:55 PM) Who would have thought Chris "Grinder" Getz would be a better ballplayer than Beckham? Amazing. Being a grinder isn't all bad. Beckham should grind more and not let his mind wander. Greg, you were always the one saying how much the Royals' fans disliked Getz. Now he's a hero because he won the game yesterday and is hitting over .300 and stealing a few bags? Chris Getz is not a starter on a playoff-contending MLB team.

He's already got, what, 4 doubles in less than a week? There was another play in the 1st inning where he just had a swinging bunt and he was running/busting his butt down to 1B so much in this series that opposing pitcher threw it away. (Later, they ruled he had missed the bag running down the line, but replays showed he clipped the RH side of the bag just barely with his foot, Guccione had bad positioning to make the proper call).

QUOTE (fathom @ May 3, 2012 -> 09:50 PM) If Axelrod is going to start vs Cleveland next week, it's pretty dumb to let them see him tonight. Probably Stults, with the LHP versus LH dominant line-up. That works in theory, but not so much for Danks tonight.

Escobar=Wilson Betemit Great spring training results fooled the Sox twice into thinking they were going to be productive contributors once the season started.

QUOTE (greg775 @ May 3, 2012 -> 08:11 PM) Ugh. Sox getting boatraced at home again. Lift and pull time. Hit some home runs soon. Great insights.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ May 3, 2012 -> 08:08 PM) Danks contract could very well cost Williams his job. Yeah, we get it. Or Beckham, or Molina, or Morel, or Viciedo, etc. Or he should have been fired for Teahen, Swisher trades, Hudson/Holmberg for Jackson and destroying Jake Peavy's career. Maybe we should give the position to Joe Cowley, wouldn't that be a great idea? I'm sure he has the capability of handling the job quite easily. Personally, I would love to see Cowley as GM and Don Cooper as manager, lol. It would be more fun than Harrelson/LaRussa and KW/Guillen.

QUOTE (God Loves The Infantry @ May 3, 2012 -> 08:04 PM) Jesus. The United States didn't get screwed as much with Solyndra as we did with Danks. What were we thinking?? Two years of a mediocre record and ERA and then a crap year with an ERA in the mid fours, and we give him $12 million?!?! When he was "good", he was middle of the rotation quality at best and last year he was lower part of the rotation. I can't believe we paid so much Jon Garland, Part Deuce. Must everything be about politics? By mentioning something like that in a game thread, what is the goal or objective?

5, 4, 3, 2, 1... Coming soon, a new PHT thread "Danks' contract the worst for a White Sox pitcher since Jake Peavy or Jaime Navarro, KW must go!"

LOL. Looking back, maybe it would have been the better move to have Santiago in the starting rotation as the 5th starter and replacement for Danks. I haven't checked fangraphs since a couple of starts ago, but his velocity was off by at least 2 MPH from 2011. 89.6 to 91.6

Farmer's not bad...he's not the worst either. He's not in the same category as Jon Miller with the Giants or Vin Scully or Rooney. I even enjoy listening to Dave Wills doing the Rays' broadcasts. The most annoying ones are the Yankees broadcasters, but what do you expect? Guess most people around baseball have the same feeling about Harrelson. As an aside, my college RA (Brett Dolan) has been doing the Astros' games with Milo Hamilton for going on 6 or 7 years now. He started his career with the Beloit Snappers and kept moving up the ladder through various minor league stops. Of course, working for the Astros during that time period (the year after the World Series through now) hasn't been the most plum assignment, but any time you get paid to do something you love, how can you argue with that?

It's not like we're facing Johan Santana or CC Sabathia or Liriano when he was dominant. Masterson's not that good. Just stating the fact that he was very very good against us in 2011. And the fact that Rios, AJ and Konerko have all cooled off in the last 3-5 games, at least compared to where they were a week ago. So I'll just say this, score 4 runs, we win (hopefully). The problem is you can't really feel confident that Danks will give us a quality start, EXCEPT for the fact there are so many LH hitters on that roster.

Speaking of NOT trading someone when they had immense value, meet Carlos Marmol. The articles in the papers have been suggesting they want to keep LaHair in the OF somewhere (part of the Byrd trade) and use Rizzo at 1B. That would give them an outfield of Soriano/Jackson/LaHair. Well...we'll see if he's more Chris Shelton/Kevin Maas/Shane Spencer/Garrett Jones or a real long-term solution at 1B (LaHair).

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=3433&p=.htm For those of you looking forward to all the summer movies, this is a pretty comprehensive ranking of how they're currently predicted to do. #1 Batman at $500 million domestically, #2 Avengers at $420 million and #3 The Spiderman reboot with Garfield/Stone. The Avengers originally profiled closer to the two Iron Man movies but has now bounced up by at least $100 million in most predictions, I've seen estimates of around $160-190 million for this weekend. BTW, starting to look forward to the Bourne movie more because Renner's done a good job in MI and Avengers convincing us that he can pull it off. I would actually argue that changing Tobey Maguire out will end up hurting that movie more than losing Damon, but we'll see. IMO, Mark Ruffalo, though, had the most standout performance of all in Avengers.

This is the one game all year I'd be tempted to bet against the Sox because of Masterson's recent dominance against us...and Danks' trend line this season. Of course, that probably means a blowout White Sox victory, but is sure feels going in with CLE playing so well on the road, us the opposite at home, the pitching match-ups, the presence of Escobar in the line-up....but that's why betting on baseball is silly, when you THINK you know something and all the signs and indicators are going in one direction, the opposite happens just as frequently.

Or, for another example, David Ortiz with the Twins...Luis Gonzalez, Jose Bautista, etc. I'm not saying he will necessarily put up their numbers over a career, but he has the "ability/potential" to do so. The ball just jumps off his bat, that's the one thing we always heard and saw in the scouting videos. We can ALSO pretty confidently say we don't have any hitters at the minor league level who have that type of an impact bat other than perhaps Jared Mitchell if he continues his current track. (And perhaps Trayce Thompson behind him). Other than that, we can dissect Viciedo's stroke, show all the videos of his homers and XB hits, Marty still will never be convinced. However, if Ozzie's sons were White Sox scouts and were the ones responsible for signing a kid like Viciedo as a FA, you would think he was the second coming of Carlos Lee, Beltre, Bobby Bonilla and Vladimir Guerrero all wrapped up into one neat little package and tied neatly with a bow.

I'm guessing maybe that scout compared his times to 1B from his days at LSU with last season (or perhaps this season)....or 1st to 3rd, 1st to home, or maybe it was simply an "eyeball observation" like most of us made with Pierre last year. Could be that he just noticed the tentativeness on the basepaths and compared that to his debut in the AFL or back to his LSU days. http://espn.go.com/college-sports/blog/_/n...all/id/4271203/ Orel Hershiser's take back from the CWS Days...makes you feel encouraged to read stuff like that. I found an old NFL draft preview and Jared ran 4.45 (lowest), 4.59 (highest) and 4.52 was the average for the 40 yard dash. That's about 0.10 or even 0.15 off the average for a true burner/deep threat in the NFL. So you're probably talking at least a step slower to 1B than say Carl Crawford or Ichiro in their primes, and definitely the stolen base technique and confidence isn't quite back 100%, either, but the bat is the biggest thing right now, along with the K rate and walks and overall defensive improvement compared to what he displayed in 2011.

Mickey Mantle might be the closest comparison...in terms of speed, power and athletic ability.

Fine, whatever you say. You're welcome to your opinion.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ May 3, 2012 -> 12:22 AM) Twins offense is fine. They need new middle infielders, but they have a really nice core group of guys that can hit the ball. Obviously not tonight, but it's good enough. Plus they have some good hitters in the minors too, so they'll be able to make those additions just fine. The main problem is that they have no pitching. They have a team ERA of 5.59 and their starters have had just 5 quality starts in 24 games. Seriously. Wrap your mind around the fact that Jake Peavy has as many quality starts as the entire Minnesota Twins do, and then you realize how bad that pitching staff is. And, unless I'm missing something, there isn't a lot on the way up either. Denard Span needs to be the first one to go for them. Mauer and Morneau are far too expensive and injury riddled to get much of anything for, but the Astros got 4 decent players for Bourn, so I don't see why the Twins can't do the same with Span. The Twins are an incredibly loyal organization, so I might be wrong, but I don't think Gardenhire will be back next year barring something miraculous (and with Pavano, Blackburn, and Marquis in the rotation, I don't see any miracles on the way). That entire team seems like it needs a new face, and following this year is probably the time. What's more amazing to consider is that, in my lifetime, the Twins have had 2 managers. I turn 25 in July. The Sox have had like 7 or 8 or I don't know, and the Marlins have had like 8 different managers and they've been around fewer than 20 years. It's stupid. Losing Kyle Gibson to TJ surgery really set them back. Obviously, Baker too, but Baker was never more than a solid/decent 3/4 type of guy, their equivalent of Gavin Floyd with a notch less in terms of stuff. Carroll and whoever they're playing at 2B (and nothing was worse than Nishioka and Casilla last year, well, maybe Tolbert and Hughes) are just band-aids. Ben Revere looks like another Span without as much pop in his bat or the ability to get on base via the walk. Aaron Hicks has yet to fulfill his potential, too. They're in a similar situation with us vis a vis Morel/Beckham with Danny Valencia, they'll have to be patient with him. But this is kind of his make-or-break season. The Ramos/Capps trade was another mind-blowing one, to go along with Hoey for JJ Hardy. If you plugged Ramos and Hardy into that line-up, it would instantly be more formidable, but it's still coming down to the health of Mauer and Morneau and the weight of their huge contracts around the neck of the franchise. They're going to have to clear the decks by dealing Span, trying to get SOMETHING for Liriano (talk about past the sell-by date, last year after his no-hitter against us he was still a valuable commodity around the game), just get Matt Capps off the books completely...

QUOTE (JPN366 @ May 2, 2012 -> 10:27 PM) Man, you take an interesting tidbit and run with it until the horse is dead and bleeding. We all knew they were going to have to move Saladino at some point, so it might as well be now. It was simply a matter of whether he was better suited for 3B rather than 2B. He probably profiles as more a "plus" player offensively in the middle infield, although I doubt he has anything close to Beckham's overall range at 2B. The question is which eventuality is most likely...Beckham can put up a 700-725 OPS again or Morel can put up a 750? Beckham has at least proven he can do that for a 3-4 month stretch (yes, the counter to that is even Mark Teahen did it once in his career with KC)...Morel's done it for 6 weeks in mostly "garbage" time in the midst of multiple meaningless games when lots of inexperienced pitchers were on the mound against him. Not just because of the game he homered, but just in general, I'd argue that Beckham still has more potential going forward than Morel. I know you and Balta and others will disagree, that's fine.

It's not only about blasting homers or being at home or on the road, it's simply a matter of scoring runs. We haven't win a single game this year out of 24 in which we scored 0, 1, 2 or 3 runs. Pretty simple.

Greg, I wasn't talking about you. Never mind. And you never answered my Dice Clay question...we'll keep Limbaugh's "persona" out of it for now and how much of that is an act and entertainment versus an expression of his true feelings. And, secondly, how much that SHOULD even matter in terms of excusing speech that some would consider at best harmful in any type of environment, whether the workplace or on the Internet. What's the difference between Andrew Dice Clay on stage, Andrew Dice Clay portraying himself on a t.v. show and the "real" Dice Clay? Which one can get away with Cowley's comments, which one couldn't? In your mind, is there any difference? http://www.tmz.com/2006/11/20/kramers-raci...caught-on-tape/ I wanted to use another example. Michael Richards/Kramer from Seinfeld. He was (rightfully) battered and vilified for comments he made while in his "comedian mode." So if he says things like that while either on stage or in the act of personifying Cosmo Kramer (but theoretically not the "real life" Michael Richards), is that not also excusable under the same protection? And what is the difference?

That's it, the header for SoxTalk should be Katie Upton with a Sox cap/bikini on and we can have random models appear with weekly guest columns that we ghostwrite for them.