caulfield12

Getting great at-bats this inning...Noesi's working so slowly, already at 30 pitches. Just can't give them a DP ball, Alex. Good swing there, Rios. Has had very strong results against SEA. CHW are 16-3 against SEA since 2010, 7-2 last year. Could have been a bigger lead, but that's the best series of at-bats from Sox hitters in a while. Made Noesi throw 38 pitches. Dunn now leading the team with 6 doubles. A lot of those will be homers when the weather heats up.

Tough luck there for Konerko. Need to score at least one of these runners.

That's two huge doubles that Dunn has gone with and flipped down the LF line this week. Great to see.

Great approach by DeAza to start the game. Let's get him over, please. Or a steal, but no CS. Team 8/12 stealing now. Brent at least battled there and didn't give in...still fouling everything to the right hand side.

Late starts are great here in China, 10 am on Saturday morning. But tmrw will suck, the game time is 4 a.m. here. Maybe I'll wake up early Sunday and catch the tail end of it, since I probably won't be missing much of an offensive display or excitement the first 6 innings or so. Looking at batters 4-5-6-7 in our line-up, we actually look like a halfway decent offense.

One thing to remember is how big Regents Park actually is... Don't be suprised to see those ERA numbers inflated by at least 0.50 to 1 full run in Charlotte. Plus in Greene, Mitchell and Martinez, more range the defensive ability than our current major league outfield.

J. Willingham having a monster April for the Twins. Bases clearing double gives them a 5-4 lead on the Rays in Florida in the 7th.

Who's that Rodriguez guy throwing 100? Clippard really shut the door on the Marlins in the 8th, Hanley Ramirez was overpowered.

Mitchell with probably the biggest game of his career so far. First homer of the season and RBI single, 2/3, 5 RBI's and only in the bottom of the 4th. 15 RBI's already. 8-0 Barons. Charlotte struggling mightily with some dude named Johan Flande. Josh Phegley with yet another hit, double. One of the other 3 hits belongs to the light-hitting Ozzie Martinez. In W-S, Kevan Smith, Pangilanan and R. Ravelo all with multi-hit games. Ravelo's actually at .404 now. K. Walker with a double. Vance got roughed up a bit this start, but only 2 ER.

Makes no sense if we continue to shed players like Floyd or Crain or Thornton. Not sure if he'd go for a one-year deal, but offering two years at his age and with his wear and tear would be asking for lots of trouble, especially if he was in a year where he was struggling or had to be benched. Let's see where we are at the end of July. We'll have a lot clearer idea of the direction of the franchise at that point, in terms of possibly being able to compete in 2013 or not.

Molina 1-2-3 first. First two balls were hit hard but right at Carlos Martinez's son in RF and at Saladino's shoestrings. Drew Garcia with a great play on a Texas Leaguer into short RF. Mostly throwing FB, sinker, curve. Velocity around 90-91-92 (hence Greg's comparisons to Zach Stewart). .296 BAA him so far this year, 2 homers allowed, 11 K's, LHB are 9/26 (.346) Saladino with a badly needed hit. 6/45, .133, 2nd double. Bunted over, Wilkins with an opposite field (he's a notorious pull hitter) single for his 11th RBI, but still hitting around just 200. Smith and Jose Martinez single, bases loaded for Jared Mitchell with 1 out (sounds familiar for Sox fans). LOL, Mitchell grounds into a tailor-made double play. 2nd inning for Molina, grounder to Saladino, nice curveball for strike 3, jams the third hitter of the inning and Justin Greene makes a nice play in the gap. 6 up, 6 down. 3rd inning, lost my feed, gave up a hit or walk but got a double play grounder and got of the inning with just 5 pitches, has faced the minimum. Yay, Mitchell's first homer, shot to RF out of the park at very deep Regents Park (over the 382 foot sign)....4-0. Best thing about it was it was lefty vs. lefty, guy for the Braves throwing 93-96 MPH tonight. Only Barons' fourth homer of the season but leading SL in XB hits. Last year, Gac (now on the M-Braves) and Wilkins his 56 homers combined. Molina labored through the top of the 4th, gave up a bad hop/spin single down the 3B line but still no runs given up through 4. Saladino with his second double of the game, this time a ball hit on the ground down the RF line past the first baseman. Nice to see some signs of life out of him. Garcia with a seeing eye single up the middle scores Saladino from 2nd.

http://www.milb.com/gameday/index.jsp?gid=...gwiaaa_chraaa_1 Charlotte (Stults) http://www.milb.com/gameday/index.jsp?gid=...msbaax_biraax_1 Another Molina start (0-1, 5.40 ERA) http://www.milb.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?s...wilafa_wswafa_1 Winston-Salem (Buch) http://www.milb.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?s...lexafx_kanafx_1 Kannapolis (Kevin Vance)

AJ's only had 7 total passed balls from 2010-now. 2006 and 2007, 24 combined. The evidence suggests he's gotten better in this area, actually, not worse.

Doesn't sound like Manto is going to be concerned about averages until they've had 250-300 at-bats this year, lol. It's going to be a long season if they stick with Morel that long hitting 2nd and striking out about half the time.

Cubs and Red Sox heading in parallel directions. 3-11/4-10.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Apr 20, 2012 -> 01:48 AM) Yes, is it too much to ask that a team with as many veterans as the White Sox and as good a pitching as the White Sox can't split with Baltimore at home? Sox effort this series? F. 3 out of 4 is a butt kicking. Effort C+ Hitting with RISP F

Well, one of the reasons that Baltimore is in first place is due to the fact they just took 3/4 from us, but they were playing over .500 ball before this series started. Of course, so were we, at 5-2. Mostly, Greg is frustrated because we always seem to do poorly against Toronto, Baltimore and the other AL Central teams, at least since 2009. On the other hand, we've made a lot of progress in terms of our results in Seattle and Oakland compared to 8-10 years ago. Of course, both of those franchises were much stronger then. So we can look at it positively (3-3 against the Rangers and Tigers, away and home series, taking 2 from CLE on the road) or that we underperformed in this series when we expected to go 3-1 or no worse than 2-2. It all evens out, though, over the course of a season...it's so much about momentum and when you play a team, injuries, etc. Things would be fine if we'd won at least one of those 3 winnable games, but we didn't. So you move on...however, it would have been a big boost to take that last game of the series in comeback fashion after coughing away Game 2 and get on the plane for that long flight together. At least we don't see Felix or Pineda this time.

http://tv.yahoo.com/news/avengers-film-rev...ZXN0Aw--;_ylv=3 First AVENGERS review...at least that I've seen. Very positive.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Apr 19, 2012 -> 10:25 PM) Probably two of the most under looked reasons for the Sox lack of success since '05 is that Danks and Floyd have been solid performers and nothing more. Or that the one true ace in Contreras fell apart. That and trading Hudson and Gonzalez with little or nothing to show for it now.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseb...0,2480450.story Manto's approach with Beckham and Morel, very little or no video.

Jurickson Profar can replace Elvis Andrus, giving them one trade chip. They've got that abundance of starting pitching, as surely many MLB teams would make a significant bid for Alexi Ogando and put him into their starting rotations. They've also got Feldman and a super deep minor league system.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Apr 19, 2012 -> 09:07 PM) He hurts you less in center than in right though. Not necessarily, because every ball hit into the RF corner by an average speed runner ends up a triple because of DeAza's weak arm. You'll have runners tagging up and advancing to 2nd, or 2nd to 3rd on a lot of balls into RF. It's easier to cover up his arm in LF or CF rather than right.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Apr 19, 2012 -> 09:06 PM) I'm fairly convinced that De Aza can't play CF. The routes he's taken on some of the balls this year have been wow-bad and he doesn't have the pure speed to make up for it. Yes, Rios had a rough year last year, but in my view he's a far better option in center. Part of this is related to the swirling winds and weather conditions. If he's playing the same way when the weather heats up in May and June, maybe then you might make a change.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Apr 19, 2012 -> 08:55 PM) It may be, but what if it's not? If you're going to play Rios and De Aza, Rios should be in CF. Based on what? 12 games and part of last season for DeAza versus almost a full season there for Rios in 2011? Rios was clearly uncomfortable playing that position, and you'd have to think some of the boo-birds for his defensive efforts/apathy/non-chalantness bled over into his offensive game. I mean, everyone gets it. It would be great if Alex was putting up his current offensive numbers (consistently) and playing an above-average major league CF. That would make it MUCH easier to unload him at some point. But clearly KW and RV don't agree with that. And with our offense struggling to score runs, we don't have the luxury of taking DeAza's bat out of the line-up and playing this decade's equivalent of Brian Anderson, Jordan Danks, in CF.

At some point, it wouldn't hurt to give Doyle a shot in Stewart's place...and let Zach get some more innings under his belt as a starter again to work on things. Carlos Sanchez was 2 for 4, continuing his nice run of play (now at .347). Looks like Snodgress pitched a very good game, and Ravelo had 3 K's.