caulfield12

I was joking about the Olympics thing. If the Greek team finished Top 3, it would have been more of an upset than the US over the Soviets in 1980 at Lake Placid. Or the Russians beating us in 1972 in basketball.

Okay, now I'm watching Gladiator, The Patriot and Braveheart. Feeling better and not so emasculated.

Let's just hope we see Verlander only one of those series and not both.

http://www.thestar.com/sports/baseball/article/705131 A little more insight on where Alex A. (sounds like someone on the Bachelorette) came from...

And Tim Collins on the Royals was part of that deal too, with Pastornicky. Hmmmm.... Still not too confident that Yunel Escobar will anything remotely resembling a star, will just have to wait and see. Now back to the Blue Jays, oops White Sox game thread.

Anthopoulos served as an advanced scout for the Greek National Baseball Team for the 2004 Summer Olympics. The Greek team finished in 7th place.

Sorry Chisoxsonic. Sorry, will now go back to Death Race, Tarantino, Machete, Sin City, The Watchmen, Tombstone and Easy Rider to make myself more macho again. Hey, when you're an English Lit major and you have to study all those authors, it's kind of interesting to see all those writers enacted/portrayed in a movie. The Hemingway character is hilarious...must have had a lot of fun with that role. And, FWIW, I liked Daniel Craig in Defiance a lot. He was very good. Golden Compass, that was a disaster for all involved, from Pullman on down. I just hope the next Bond movie (whenever it gets ironed out) is more like Casino Royale....the last one was super-disappointing.

Sounds like they're facing a Hispanic version of porn star Dirk Diggler.

Allen's like the poor man's Mark Grace, or the rich man's Ryan Sweeney (or however that goes). He better hit .320 or .330 every season because he's only going to give you 12-18 homers per year. That's not enough for 1B/DH. In some ways, he's reminiscent of Michael Morse. Long, athletic build. Doesn't really have a position (at the moment) where his bat's a "plus" tool.

But giving the contracts to Mark in 2007 and Konerko twice, I think it will make the decision that much harder for JR. None of those blew up in the face of the White Sox. Nothing like Dunn/Rios/Peavy have. You have to go back to 2004-05. We have to be more efficient with how we spend our precious resources. At that time, KW would never hesitate to deal a Danks (or Garland or Rowand or whoever) when they became too expensive. The question is what KW was offered for Danks this past deadline...it has to be a heckuva lot greater than any draft pick compensation we'll ever receive. If the White Sox were situated like they were coming off 2007 and Danks was in the same situation (then) he's at today...then there would be a lot more reasons to sign him than there are now. The main reason to sign him is because they're stuck in "All In" mode and have no other choice but to double down until they end up winning the division or setting the franchise back five full years. We're already almost to that point with what KW has done the last 2-3 years.

Yes, he does. But do you really think JR will go there, in your heart of hearts? Maybe the odds are 33% at best. I think this whole "All In" stuff has made the Board of Directors a little gunshy and uncertain of what to do with KW. The White Sox somehow rally to win the division, Buehrle expresses a desire to return...then things can obviously change again.

$18 million will be "crazy" money to JR. Anything over $14-15 million, anything over 3 years, he'd be advised to walk away. Danks is just not consistent enough or dominating enough to get that kind of money from the White Sox. If they didn't have all the other bad contracts on the book, you could at least think about it. I wouldn't be surprised to see a period where no contracts for longer than 3 years went to a Sox player (except someone like Konerko/Buehrle who's already on the team). Danks makes little sense to this team going forward without Floyd/Buehrle also staying in the rotation. Humber's just too shaky and we don't have a clue what we might have with Sale as a starter yet.

JoeCoolMan is.

Fister vs. Masterson AT CLE Porcello vs. Jimenez Verlander vs. Carmona. Indians will take 2/3. We have to take 3/4 from the Orioles. That puts us at 4 GB heading into the weekend. Then another 2/3 from Kansas City. By the way, please tell me we don't have to face Bruce Chen again!!

Unless Paulie was REALLY hurting from trying to bust it down to 3B on Quentin's "single." But yeah, it would have made more sense to replace Dunn defensively. It's not like Lillibridge can just go out there and swipe bases at will against Wieters.

Petricka didn't pitch too poorly but took the loss. Viciedo seems to either still be fighting off rust or frustrated that he won't get up to Chicago until September. Milledge has rebounded nicely this season. I'm sure he'll figure into any "going cheap/er" plans they have for 2012 with DeAza, Lilly and possibly Jor. Danks. No Mitchell, maybe needed a mental health day. Thompson needs to try to rally to get his average up to the .240 mark.

Didn't Hendry do the same thing from a hospital bed? Well, for what it's worth, it seems Daniels operates the same way in Texas. He had to, because of the mistakes he made in the first couple of seasons down there and because of the gaps in his baseball background/knowledge compared to many other young GM's.

I would say the same thing about KW, except you could (recently) replace competency with ego and drive with "ambition." Unfortunately, his risk-taking/gambling side of the brain has won out too much since 2008. And having both of his sons in the minors is just embarassing. Can you imagine being asked to write game reports or a scout being asked for an honest appraisal about his sons' level of play. They just can't say the truth. But everyone in the system knows they shouldn't be there taking up roster spots from more deserving players, Shaffer's kid, the Guillen kids, etc. It's bad enough to be the worst farm system in baseball. Having his sons take playing time away from someone...anyone, that's even worse almost.

Point #4...and that's why we shouldn't be clamoring for Ryne Sandberg to manage the Sox. Somehow, it will backfire and have a bad ending. As far as point 2, I think that came DIRECTLY FROM OZZIE. It was just shot back at Valentine under the cover of Oney, but this sounds exactly like something Ozzie would say in an interview about other managers around the sport that are currently inactive...if they asked, "Is Bobby Valentine more deserving of the Florida Marlins job (than you)?" You just know he's fall back on the 2005 thing right away. But do you really think Ozzie would do that to Gardenhire? No way. He respects Gardenhire way too much to throw HIM under the bus like a media/attention whore on ESPN or MLB Network. Ozzie is threatened by his own kind. He wants to be the alpha dog and run the pack. Valentine and Showalter are baseball's versions of Donald Trump and Gallagher.

The White Sox are 15-5 in their last 20 road games. But 8 games under 500 at home. Maybe one should start by looking at who we lost from that 2008 team (Crede/Uribe/Cabrera, etc.)....because they were the last Sox team to hold "serve" on their home field. Back then, you felt it they could play 500 on the road, they could dominate at home and that would be enough (maybe) to win the division. For 3 years, we've been so-so or worse at home. You could also blame apathetic/skeptical home crowds, inflated prices and attendance. Less pressure on the road...less media attention, especially the West Coast games. Players are TOO relaxed when they're around their wives and family...whereas other White Sox teams had more younger players and fewer married guys. Who knows? But there are counter-examples like Rios having an OPS under 500 on the road. I haven't looked at the splits this year, but weren't Beckham and/or Quentin horrible at USCF the last couple of years? With Dunn, you really think that "short" RF bleachers home run porch is playing with his head a bit....just like Target Field is starting to get to Mauer with his 1 homer in a season's worth of games.

1) Valentine is a top candidate for the Marlins' job. Of course, there is a rivalry there. Oney wants his dad to have a job SOMEWHERE managing. 2) I'll bet Ozzie made a comment around the house or dinner table about Valentine never winning anything (besides Japan)...I highly doubt Oney came up with this on his own 3) Does Valentine routinely say the same thing about the Reds, Rockies and Twins' managers? What about Buck Showalter? Adam Jones made a throw so fundamentally bad it would have made Alex Rios red with jealousy. And, of course, because the winning run was then on 2B instead of at first, the baseball gods decreed that he be driven in to put the O's 24 games under .500. Instead of fixing that problem, Showalter's calling up the league offices in NYC to get a ball hit by Jones ruled a hit (instead of an error). 4) Will anyone in South Florida support the team because Valentine's the manager? Doubtful. He's getting up there in age. Maybe not like McKeon or Davey Johnson, but he's not the same manager he was 10-20 years ago.

Mike Napoli >> Hank Conger/Kevin Mathis. This is another of those Kotsay/Jones over Thome situations where if you put Napoli's numbers back on the Angels, they're running away with the division and have a pretty potent and balanced offense. Stick Miguel Cabrera, Adrian Gonzalez or even Torii Hunter on the White Sox and they're right there leading the division. Or Victor Martinez instead of Dunn. Heck, Jeff Francouer (Greg's plan) instead of Dunn, Melky Cabrera instead of Rios. Yeah, I know. That hindsight stuff is easy to do.

Greg, that Morel play almost ended up costing us the game. This game was absolutely pivotal. You have to secure the ball with two hands there. If he's going to have a sub 600 OPS offensively, he has to be BETTER than Joe Crede defensively, and he's just not at that level yet. Watch Alexei Ramirez's at-bats closely. Look at how many balls that he actually takes and hits in the direction they're pitched. He's turning and burning on practically every pitch (outside or not) and grounding out to 3B or SS the majority of the time. He should be a 290-310 hitter and has ended up regressing from his Silver Slugger season last year. Then watch Quentin's two doubles to the opposite field. What does he normally do with those pitches? He's out and around them and pulling them into double plays. We just don't have enough speed and athleticism up and down our line-up to pull the ball on the ground to the left side so much. It has killed rallies and based loaded or RISP position situations all season. Gordon Beckham actually had a great at-bat last night. It wasn't his homer or the AB he fouled off a bunch of pitches and then weakly popped to the left side/LF. It was the ball he lined out to the RF with RISP. How many times has Gordon hit line drives to the right side? That's the hitter he used to be. He could turn and burn on offspeed stuff, but he took fastballs on the outside half up the RCF gap for doubles consistently, or down the RF line. All the balls he has hits on in that direction this year are "seeing eye" singles or duck snorts. I bet there's only 5-10 balls all seasons that he has blistered in that direction.

Crain sucks, Morel sucks. Where were Frasor or Sale? I guess Ozzie considers them overworked, but he just about killed Crain tonight, too. You just knew Ozzie was going to leave Danks in too long before calling in the pen, and then he stuck with Crain too long and was REALLY fortunate to escape with a win. Santos was great....once again Danks ALMOST wet the bed but certainly didn't look like the type of pitcher you'd pay $14-15 per million for season for 4-5-6 years. The 3B (Bell) swinging on that change-up a foot off the plate against Danks was key. So was AJ's catch of that pop-up. A rare late innings rally. Lucky for us that their middle relief sucks. Alexei simply had a horrible approach at the plate tonight. I really hope that Morel isn't our starting 3B next year. Seemingly, he needs at least another half season or more in AAA.

Maybe it's Anne Hathaway's glasses that don't do it??? Who is in that second picture? Looks like Maria Ozawa??? Halfway through MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, having studied Hemingway, FS Fitzgerald, Picasso, Gertrude Stein, TS Eliot, all those 1920's Parisian writers/artists/singers/poets/painters....I love it. Maybe it's because I am a big Owen Wilson fan, and he's almost perfect for this role. A lot of people have either a love or hate reaction to this film, though.