caulfield12

Waiting for someone to chime in with a "Peavy is worthless" comment at some point. 4 runs given up, 7 hits. Willie Harris appearance. Hector Santiago with two consecutive K's. It would be ironic if the ace of the team turns out to be someone who wasn't even in the Top 20 or 30 list coming into 2011, and neither Peavy or Sale. That's the fun part about baseball, though.

Morel seems to be through his back issues for now. Already glad not to see Alex Rios' name in the line-up, not the greatest omen for our supposed #3 hitter.

Just wait for Pineda to change his mechanics when he comes back and end up like Jake Peavy. Then Cowley will have another fireable offense, theoretically, to write about.

Brett Gardner AND Banuelos OR Batances for Floyd, Lillibridge and Viciedo That might be a bit more plausible.

Well, since Pineda just went on the DL with tendinitis, didn't really buy that one. And the Danks no trade clause for this season. Although it would be something of a wet dream for Phil Rogers, with how much he loves local product Granderson.

Konichiwa? I think I'd rather welcome Brent Lillibridge to see if he can continue his power-hitting from 2011. Fukudome seems done as an everyday player. Perhaps they will platoon, though.

Isn't that what Greg does by always defending Ozzie? Devil's Advocate. Well, whatever the actual result, it's likely that the issue has become so politicized that very few will be satisfied with the conclusion. If Zimmerman eventually walks, which seems more and more likely, then it's just one more in a long line of miscarriages of justice to the African-American community stretching way back to Emmet Till and beyond. If the Justice Department intervenes, or Attorney General Eric Holder, then they're abusing their Federal powers and railroading Zimmerman because Obama's black, that will be the argument. Above and beyond that, you have the upcoming 2012 Presidential election and the precarious position the GOP has put themselves into (boxed into a corner) by the numerous inflammatory comments made during primary season. I'm not sure anyone on the political side of this sees an advantage in going after a conviction at this point. Maybe Keith Olbermann... With George Bush, Latinos gave him 43% support. McCain was in the mid 30's. Romney's all the way down to the teens (in one poll that is claimed to be an outlier) but arguably bleeding at least 20% of the Hispanics who were trending GOP 8 years earlier because of all the harsh, tough on immigration rhetoric out there.

QUOTE (Brian @ Mar 30, 2012 -> 03:12 PM) "Jeff, Who Lives at Home" is pretty teriffic. It's a bit surprising this movie hasn't picked up a bit more momentum and the box office. Another one that's more of a critics' favorite without quite hitting the sweet spot of mass audience buzz.

Has anyone seen "Case de mi Padre," the current Ferrell movie where he's speaking in Spanglish for most of it? As far as the best movies for 2012 so far (there's no way I will agree with THE HUNGER GAMES for that category): The Lorax 21 Jump Street The Chronicle The Grey Red Tails Friends with Kids The Secret World of Arietty Well, that could be right. Unless you included some of the movies that officially came out in December, 2011 and stretched into the New Year, the list is pretty bleak. There haven't even been that many movies that were even 100% "entertaining": Safe House, Journey 2, Act of Valor, Contraband and Project X had their moments, but none of them were worth the price of admission. I don't know if you have to include TITANIC 3-D on the list, technically it's NOT a new movie.

Rios has been a carbon copy duplicate of his 2009 version (after we acquired him), post ASB 2010 version and 2011 all over again this spring. Yikes! If Dunn really plays well this year, 90% of the heat from fans is going to be focused squarely on him.

Most African-Americans (that I'm personally acquainted with) go for the 1/8th or 1/4th rule, if you prefer, he can be called bi-racial and not African-American, I suppose. Then we could get into an argument about skin pigmentation of his father, who's considered black by almost everyone I know. Or argue about Tiger Woods, for example. If he's not black, how would describe him? Asian? Bi-racial? Well, technically we're all bi-racial if you go back to our ancestors in Europe or wherever in the year 500 or 750 or 1000.

He's going to REALLY struggle to follow in the footsteps of Huggins and Martin recruiting-wise. Good coach, nice guy, but it all comes down to talent these days. Going to have to scrape for overlooked 2-3 star recruits and JC guys/transfers.

Rios, Flowers and Fukudome all fail with Paulie on 3rd after a rare triple (outfielder tried to make a miracle catch ill-advisedly), does suck to have that feeling in the back of your mind from 2011, "here we go again," and then of course we give up a run right away with Ohman on the mound the next frame to extend to a 2-0 lead. Team has been pretty flat recently after going on that nice stretch of play where they won 7 of 9 or 8 of 10 or whatever it was.

Melton: Beckham threw the ball over to 1B on one hop to get it there faster. Note: Other than the likes of Ozzie Smith, Dave Concepcion or Omar Vizquel taking the ball deep in the hole and bouncing it with the fast delivery on Astroturf, that's not really true.

But we also have Ramirez, DeAza, Escobar, Viciedo, Santiago and Rios, 6 players with Hispanic origins. Plus, we've got Fukudome now. That's right around the average now in baseball, 6-9 Latin Americans per team. Two of our better prospects in Mitchell and Trayce Thompson are African-American. There have also been a few times in the last 20 years when the White Sox (I think) started an all-black/Hispanic team.

Does the Sun Times family of newspapers have any connections with a Miami or Florida paper? That might be his only way to stay relevant going forward.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Mar 30, 2012 -> 11:39 PM) Walking around looking at houses can very easily look like someone scoping out an empty house to rob. It could have also been Martin looking for a particular house in a neighborhood he wasn't yet totally familiar with. I still see little reason why it was wrong of Zimmerman to be suspicious. Since the guy was black, many people are going to jump immediately to racism and won't be talked down from it. If the majority of crimes in your neighborhood (which has also seen a rise in crime recently) are committed by black youths covering their faces up, it's only logical to be suspicious of a new person in your neighborhood looking like that, especially if you're familiar with people who live near you. I thought he didn't put his hood on until after he became concerned Zimmerman was following him or going to try to approach him?

QUOTE (justBLAZE @ Mar 30, 2012 -> 09:40 PM) Morel left the game early with tight back. He keeps on having these back issues.. It will be interesting to see if they choose to go with Lillibridge or Escobar, if it's a longer-term thing. With the anticipated offensive struggles, you'd think Brent would get the first shot. Sale Reed Santiago N. Jones Escobar Morel Ramirez Beckham Viciedo Flowers (we have to be able to take 60-70% credit for his improvement defensively) 40% of the major league roster being homegrown isn't shabby at all for the worst farm system in MLB. Not to mention the development of Santos and Daniel Hudson.

QUOTE (Cali @ Mar 30, 2012 -> 09:29 PM) We know what we're getting out of Bruney. We saw it last year. He's not a pitcher. Jones is younger, and it'd be nice to see what they have in him. The team isn't competing so it'd be nice to see if Jones can hack it. Develop a nice young hard throwing bullpen core: Reed, Jones, Santiago Not to mention Stewart will be throwing 92-95 out of the pen as well. He has a lot of experience as a reliever from his time in the Reds' minor league system. Not Balta's planned-for outcome this offseason, but we still have a lot more insurance than recent years with Axelrod, Simon Castro, Doyle and Molina, along with Hector Santiago.

So the bullpen shapes up like this now. Thornton Crain Reed Santiago Ohman Stewart N. Jones Bruney, Axelrod and Stults on the outside looking in. In Santiago and Stewart, you've also got 2 guys who can give you 2-3-4 innings.

I'm going to predict that we see Nathan Jones a lot earlier than expected. The guy's consistently hitting 97 MPH with his fastball, whereas Bruney's much lower, unless he's working on a sinker that we don't know about, as opposed to the four seam riding FB. At any rate, Jones has a LOT more potential, if he can control that mid 80's slider. In unrelated news, Alex Rios still sucks. K, two groundouts and a GIDP. OPS sinking into the mid 500's again. UGLY.

7 K's for Dunn now in 45 AB's, but most of them have come in the last week. Still, he would have 2 game stretches last year where he'd record that many strikeouts. A no-hitter by O'Sullivan through 4 2/3rd. Alexei Ramirez of all people walked to break up the perfect game. Shades of last year against the Royals with the offense. If Cain can hit this well in the regular season, they'll finally start getting a return on that Greinke deal. It doesn't seem like Esocbar is ever going to be more than a good field/no hit type of SS. Didn't realize Bruney had such a low ERA, 0.73. Of course, saying that, he's officially jinxed for this game and will surrender multiple runs. And his fastball's only at 90 or 91 on the radar, that's not going to work in the regular season. He used to throw 94-97 when he was with the Yankees and D-Backs.

Perhaps Stults was always a long shot to make the team, but his ERA's still around the low 3's, 3.38. The main question is do they want to let Stewart and Axelrod both continue to work as starters at Charlotte? You can see them going with Bruney and Stults as the last guy out of the bullpen/spot starter/innings eater in blowouts. Going by how they're talking, you'd have to think they will keep Stewart in the pen and send Axelrod down.

QUOTE (Cali @ Mar 30, 2012 -> 07:03 PM) Ugh... I hate Physioc and Hudler and now they're the Royals broadcasters... No, I think they're just doing the game for MLB.com. Normally, on the RSN, it should be Bob David and Ryan Levebvre, the one who got into it with Milton Bradley and the manager's son.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Mar 30, 2012 -> 05:00 PM) He has a history of calling 911 for just about everything. So no. It's not a history of calling about black youths and only black youths. He calls 911 for just about anything he sees. So that's wasting lots of taxpayer dollars and resources (the Boy Who Cried Wolf), he should have been taken off the Watch. Has one of his hunches ever turned out to have prevented an actual crime in progress, or has it always been simply suspicion a crime might be committed in the future?