caulfield12

I don't think a no-hitter against us gets us any closer to changes. It's going to take our usual 3-5 mental errors per game over the final 2 1/2 weeks of July. In all fairness, the shadows are really playing tricks with hitters and will continue to do so for the first 2-3 innings.

Verlander hasn't been touched up his last 7 starts in a row against us. We used to, maybe not quite own him, but we really lit him up in the first 3-4 years of his career. Only 6 ER in last 72+ innings. 9 consecutive starts with 2 runs or less given up. One of the best streaks (other than Hershiser or Pedro) from a pitcher since the 1960's.

It was a game at Cincy in late May or early June that 2006 that Contreras lost the winning streak AND hurt himself. Was never the same (with the White Sox) after that. Seems he really struggled with arm angles and location from that point on....and he lost confidence in the fastball, which kept too much pressure on his forkball, which was consistently erratic. Didn't he always lead the league in passed balls while he was with us? It's pretty amazing what he could do with just two pitches. Same with Edwin Jackson when he's right. Which hasn't been very often.

Are you rating the music and girls' dominatrix outfits or the actual movie itself?? Everyone besides Abbie Cornish was ridiculously bad in that movie....I mean, errr, extended video game/music video. It couldn't decide if it was a male fantasy pseudo-softcore porn movie or an action adventure. It turned out to neither. Interesting visually, but the screenplay made Avatar look like Grapes of Wrath or War and Peace.

A-Rod has the meniscus tear and surgery. Besides Jeter, who else didn't show? Rivera? Sorry, haven't been following it closely.

That and the tradition going all the way back to Babe Ruth, 1933 and our own Comiskey Park. No other game comes close in terms of longevity. Heck, they used to play 2 All-Star games each year for a long time.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 15, 2011 -> 07:52 AM) The question is would he still hit that kind of velocity as a starter. And that's why Hector Santiago is, at the very least, intriguing. He sustained 93-94 and touched 95 over 3+ innings. Mix in his repertoire of pitches, the screwball....you might have something. I trust our minor league development guys 100X more with pitchers than hitters. Although we do have a habit of rushing guys....Boone Logan comes to mind right away.

With Thornton's contract extension looming...where his salary enters quasi-closer level dollars in his mid 30's, there's just no way with the dearth of starting pitching out there that he'd bring us back more in return than Jackson for a 1/2 season rental and the Type B compensation at the end of it. If it was the Matt Thornton of 2010, I'd agree with you...2009, 2008, etc. And now there's absolutely zero doubt in the minds of baseball people that he could ever be a successful closer, so that makes him a bit less valuable, too. You might find some teams to take Thornton's salary "as is" but you wouldn't get anything close to a Top 10 prospect back.

But what about the players in the other 3 main sports? It's about building your brand. Forget about the US. If you MLB wants to make inroads in places like China or India or Brazil, it needs to showcase its stars and build up their global appeal. The world responds best to "superstars" in soccer and American basketball, so taking away one more avenue to familiarize the rest of the world with your best players is kind of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Nobody would argue that the ASG for MLB isn't the best of the 4 major sports. Think of the last time you watched the entire game....all the way through, from beginning to end, for NBA/NHL/NFL.

It's like tech stocks 10-15 years ago. If you just picked a basket of 25-50 top Latin American properties for $1 million each, you only need to hit on 1-2-3 of them to get the same rate of return you would get signing one Dunn or taking on the Rios contract. Let's say you get a 3rd-5th starter, a position player who's league average and one All-Star. Not to mention the fact that when you sign a FA, you're losing that first round draft pick, which is like you just forfeited the opportunity to sign maybe 3-5 top Latin American prospects. Really...shouldn't we take this philosophy every time out when you look at resigning John Danks OR spending it all on development/minor leaguers? As soon as Danks is making $15 million per year, he's not much of an asset. Look at Mark Buehrle. As good as he's been this year, it's not like we would get much more than a couple of B level prospects for him in trade. Actually, it's even more limited because there's only a few teams he would probably accept a trade to, so teams like the Cardinals or Yankees know that they don't have to offer as much if it really becomes a salary relief issue. The problem seems to be that we're 2-3 years behind the curves on getting the right scouts in the right places to even begin returning to being a "player" again. In that sense, I'd rather the White Sox made a big splash with another Viciedo-esque signing that would put them back on the map in both the DR and Venezuela.

Since, he's worth 10X more as an "average" left-handed starter if he can sustain his velocity for 5-6-7 innings. Otherwise, he's just a cross between Matt Thornton, Clayton Richard, Royce Ring and Aaron Poreda. How many left starters are there who throw 94-98 MPH and have at last 3 pitches in their arsenal? Think of it this way...who's worth more to another team, Matt Thornton (one of the best LH relievers in the game since we've acquired him) or Edwin Jackson? You're still going to get more of a return for Edwin, as mediocre as he's been for the past 6-8 weeks.

http://www.freep.com/article/20110715/SPOR...ews|text|Sports

http://www.freep.com/article/20110715/SPOR...ews|text|Sports

That's a good idea, except most franchises don't want to give up an extra weekend of home games during the heart of the summer. It would definitely be better for the game (overall)...although some would argue that the traditional Tuesday night placement would be lost if it got jammed in with all the other traditional weekend events (NASCAR, tennis, golf, etc.) The NBA, NFL and NHL All-Star games are all usually on a Sunday, right?

The "chip on the shoulder" theory that all our sister cities in the AL Central feel a greater desire to knock the White Sox off? Maybe. Not sure it's about the cities/markets....it's more about the mindset of that team. Look at the White Sox/Cubs rivalry. We have always wanted to beat them for the same reasons, I guess. They're yuppies and frat boys and Iowa grandmothers with broaches...the White Sox fans are knowledgeable, blue collar, working stiffs who won't countenance a player who dogs it or a lazy/apathetic team. Seems for a long time both the Tigers and White Sox have had problems with the Twins. Those are the two big market/big spending teams (up until the last two seasons, when the Twins have caught up). When I was watching the Womens' World Cup game the other night, the coach made a comment about how American teams are known around the world for having the biggest heart....that their technical precision isn't as beautiful, but that they outwork, outhustle and out-athlete you to to death and wear you down. That American athletes are born and bred to believe they're the best and that they'll usually win in the end. I think that mindset has just gotten into the heads of every team in the division...that they can't beat the Twins. (The Royals are now 4-6 against them this year, much better than the 1-7 we've put up). I just don't think this team has believed in itself on a consistent basis since that '08 season, with the exception of that one stretch in the middle of last season. It's that mindset....you get the early lead and you hold it every time. You have the lead late, your bullpen's going to come through. Even if you're down 1-2-3-4 runs, you never feel you're out of a game. We've seen flashes of that, but never on a consistent basis. Probably that's a good reason we've never won more than 4 in a row this year. Cuddyer said it best. They just expect the White Sox to screw up and let them back into nearly every game. Until we change the manager or GM responsible (or both), things are never going to change unless the players stop accepting it. The fans don't believe 100% in their team anymore...either. We're all skeptical. Like that thread "will the Sox make any changes over the ASB?" and probably 80-85% said no way. Whatever happened since that 2008, we've totally lost that home field advantage that used to be automatic at USCF even in some of our down seasons.

Deathy Hallows 2 is a very good movie. Unlike Transformers, you never look at your watch and wonder when the action's going to start again and why it feels like it's dragging. Personally, I liked Cuaron's Potter the best, but Yates and his crew have actually done a better job with these last two movies than the final book itself. As far as the 3D goes, it's just not worth it. I expected to be blown away by both Transformers and HP in 3D and still don't get it. The only movies I loved in 3D were Avatar (obviously) and How To Train Your Dragon. Nothing else comes close. Still think there will never be a movie battle scene to equal "Helm's Deep" in LOTR, but there's really a lot to like about this movie and I'm glad I had the patience to stick with the franchise all the way to the end.

Except in all fairness, we've never had those 90 loss seasons, except for 2007. And we followed that up with 89 and a playoff appearance. Yeah, of course if we go into full rebuilding, it will look like the late 90's or 1985-1989. Attendance will be abysmal, bottom 5-7 in the majors but we'd still have at least #12-18 revenue because of the local media rights and higher prices across the board than every market but NY and Boston. This is ONE big reason to be optimistic. The fact that attendance is currently trending back to 20-30% of total revenues expected in any given year, rather than 45-60%. We don't have to cut all the way back down to $50-65 million, and JR and the front office are smart enough to know that won't fly when you've been spending nearly twice that. You can still have a very competitive team in the AL Central at $90-105 million. The Twins are hamstrung now with the Mauer and Morneau deals. They might lose Liriano, Pavano and Kubel and/or Cuddyer soon. You can see how it affected them, they had to shed Hardy/Hudson and their entire bullpen because of payroll issues, this after the first year in their new stadium with sellout crowds almost every game. The Royals are still way behind in producing starting pitchers who can win consistently. The Tigers look a lot more like the White Sox than a young, rising team like the Indians. And the Indians still aren't drawing nearly enough fans to be able to go out and acquire too much in the trade market...they can't afford to add pieces like Beltran yet.

The weird thing is that Guillen had the advantage over Gardenhire until May of 2009. What's changed in the last 3 seasons? The Royals have seemingly always played us tough...even winning some huge games late in 2005 when we were nearly choking it away down the stretch. Before that, we absolutely dominated them. We used to be to the Tigers what the White Sox now are to the Twins...I think it was something like a 30-15 stretch against them. Yet you could argue that DET in recently years is not nearly as talented as the team we basically owned 4-5-6 years ago. You'd think with the Indians throwing all these young pitchers we're not very familiar with like Carrasco and Tomlin that they'd have the advantage over us. Strange days.

I knew that one was coming, lol. Would have been a good joke after the Milly-wah-kay fiasco. Can't edit the thread titles after they've been been submitted.

Was listening to one of the games tonight and they brought up the fact that there was a big movement (among the players' union) to make the All-Star Break 4 games for all teams (about half the teams are playing tonight, 14 to be exact). 1) Some argue this gives a big advantage to the teams that get the longer break. 2) The Sunday starters would no longer be penalized by missing the game. With so many players absent this time, it didn't really feel like the best possible teams or match-ups were out there, leading to a very "flat" game even though it is for the home field advantage in the World Series. 3) Lots of players would like to have more time to travel home...and that giving four days versus three days makes a huge difference when you're spending two of those days/nights flying. 4) The Futures Game can get more individual recognition that it deserves. 5) Starting rotation gets an extra day of rest. Banged up players get extra time to heal or return from DL. Arguments against... 1) Makes the season even longer...season really should be shortened back to 154 games with extra teams/added round of playoffs. 2) Fans go crazy waiting four full days for the season to resume....teams lose their momentum. 3) "Tradition" of the 3 day break 4) SoxTalk gets very frustrating without new Guillen, Dunn and Rios miscues to complain about 5) With Jeter skipping the game, elongating the ASB provides additional incentive for players to take the time off to be with their families or heal from "mystery" injuries

Bruce Chen baffling the Twins as well. 3-0 for now in the middle innings. Mauer had a ball he couldn't handle from Liriano go to the backstop and then made an ill-advised backhand flip to the plate, allowing 2 runners to score on one play. Two errors in that same inning for a team that had gone 5 games without making a mistake (mostly against the Sox). POOF. Ooops, I mean Plouffe. 4-3 Twins. That didn't last. If this keeps up, they'll be able to tie us tmrw night for 3rd place. Delmon Young back in the line-up as well after the ankle injury.

Their sole lefty is Boone Logan, our old friend, yes?

It's still not exactly clear why we're not a player in the international signings market. Last time I checked, we weren't a "small market" club. We paid Viciedo more than anyone, and obviously we've had success with players like Contreras and Ramirez, so you'd think that some agents/buscones and players' families would look at OTHER issues, although unfortunately money is always going to be the #1 factor. Same thing with the potential to play for a "national hero" if you're a young Venezuelan player (not to mention the presence of Vizquel as part of the organization and probably a future coach). I just don't get how we can throw money at Manny Ramirez or Mark Teahen and then just never take a chance signing one of these "big bonus baby" deals in the Dominican or Venezuela.

Bartolo Colon got hammered tonight. More and more pressure building on Cashman to make a pitching move (Jackson, Floyd, Danks, possibly Buehrle).

Which would be the sad part. Sacrificing Konerko (sure JR and the fans will love that one) because of players like Dunn, Teahen and Rios that nobody wants to see play. That would be adding insult to injury to the already cynical fanbase, along with trading Danks, Quentin and Buehrle. Well, KW was in this same "dark place" in 2007, dug down deep and decided to keep Buehrle and Dye around. It's not his modus operandi...which has actually been one of his strengths, but a weakness simultaneously. But it certainly worked out in 2008.