caulfield12

Who'd a thunk it? Wow, have to give credit to Pierre for picking up Paulie there. Great job of turning on a fastball. Beckham woke up today, too. Thanks, Morel. Too bad we didn't have a pinch-runner available for Paulie there.

Well, this is a strange game. Fell asleep and couldn't believe we'd somehow tied it. Nice recovery by Sale to get the K on Helton. That was the key. This team really has a knack for protecting Peavy for some odd reason.

QUOTE (chiguy79 @ Jun 30, 2011 -> 02:48 PM) Comparing career OPS is sort of useless when our players have obviously regressed...we bought high and are stuck with them. How many players do we really have that are in their prime? Quentin and Ramirez. Beckham, god knows what you have with him, but it's not like Ozzie and Walker can make a great baseball player so bad or below average for so long, anymore than they gave the Fountain of Youth drink to Konerko. Rios? That's on Walker and Ozzie? Really? And Morel's a rookie, what could have realistically been expected from him, especially vis a vis the majority of Sox hitting prospects for a decade?

Why can't you just strike out, Dunn? It's becoming laughably bad now.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 30, 2011 -> 02:30 PM) Because this offense should be 100+ runs better than it is to this point in the season. Cue the "well, we're 9th in the AL in batting average and 9th in runs scored, our ERA is only 7th...it's not like there is a huge disparity, Cooper is overrated" argument.

About to say at least the pitcher's not leading off and then remembered it was Pierre, Oldmar and Dunn. How can you blame Walker for this team not hitting? Harry Houdini couldn't do anything with these guys. Maybe that explains the dearth of "Fire Walker" threads or even Dick Allen's willingness to argue on his behalf. Feels like the mid to late 80's White Sox offense....playing in Old Comiskey. Brutal.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Jun 30, 2011 -> 02:14 PM) He was extended to be in a utility role. Screaming about bench signings is kind of ridiculous. Pierre? Obviously. Rios? He is losing that gamble. But to complain about the bench is a bit much. I'd love to see KW put together a couple teams with a more competent manager before I vilify him as well. That's even dumber. Why would you give someone $4-5 million per year to sit on the bench??? Basically, that's the same as Juan I Can Never Be Benched Pierre is making. I just can't buy that the idea of the extension was to make him the 25th man on the roster. That position is for guys like Vizquel or Lillibridge that you pay maybe $2-3 million combined. We're not the Yankees that we can pay bench players $15 million plus.

6 consecutive cutters at 86-90 MPH? HMMM.

Peavy in real trouble again here. How well do screwballs work in the Colorado air?

Teahen now 4 for his last 34. Well, at least one of those 4 hits was exciting. Why does it feel like a line-up with Pierre leading off, Dunn 3rd, Rios 4th and Teahen 5th is basically conceding the game? Could Ozzie have made a worse line-up had he just drawn the names out of a hat as he suggested doing during our 4-18 streak?

Just don't get the logic of resting Quentin AND Konerko. Quentin, I get. But the only legit offensive threat we've had the last week, along with AJ?

Of course, losing (or winning) this game has VERY little to do with Juan Pierre, but why, why, why does he always seem to come up with RISP or in key situations?

Our patented "passed ball/hit-by-pitch" offense. Winning (or losing) ugly. Wow, can't believe he walked Peavy, too. What are the odds that Pierre comes through with a 2 run single here?

Was reading that Verlander has a 0.72 ERA in his last 7 starts. That doesn't even include the no-hitter against the Blue Jays. 10+ K's (including 14) in 3 consecutive games. The Mets had scored something like 56 runs in the 4 games coming into the match-up, so you're not going to get a hotter line-up against him. Laughing at the Rockies' radio team saying "Beckham had a fine year in 2010." .252, 9, 49. I guess that's what we're left to expect now.

He was at 87-89 towards the end of that inning. Almost all of his pitchers are at the same speed, relatively speaking. Not a good recipe for success.

Have a bad feeling about this.... They'd be better off just letting Santiago go out there or whoever. We'll see if this has any lingering effects.

Peavy's velocity is down. 89-91 pretty consistently. Does he always throw like that in the beginning of the game and then get it back up closer to the mid-90's as the game goes on? Can't seem to put Tulowitzki away at all, not missing bats. Five foul balls now on 3-2 pitches, 13 pitches. Ugh. 3 run homer.

We've had that unusual circumstance of 2 off days in one week. I don't get why we're sitting Konerko, instead of Pierre, for example. Because Dunn's defense will do much less damage at 1B? If we already are putting Teahen in RF, might as well thrown Dunn out in LF, too, and go for broke offensively.

I get what he's trying to do. For one, I'd just like to see us actually get back to .500 (breaking through the 2 games under mark that we've been able to get past). Whatever it takes to get there. Win today, take 2/3 from the Cubs and we're only 1 game under. I just don't feel close to confident enough to predict a sweep of the Cubs at Wrigley. Imagine that Quentin gets thrown out by 15 feet, we exhaust our bullpen yet again into extra innings and we're sitting at 5 games under? The view from that position would feel a lot different, wouldn't it? So we can feel fortunate all we want to about the position we're in currently, but there's a ton left to prove for most Sox fans to begin to believe in them again. http://www.baseballprospectus.com/odds/ One thing is absolutely certain, we need to take care of business against the Royals and Twins next week b4 we start to worry about the Tigers and possibly the Indians.

Number of "overtly positive" threads from Greg Hibbard between now and July 31st. Over/under=19

Do we have the ABILITY to be one of the best staffs in the AL? Sure, we said that before the season without even factoring in Humber's contribution. It's going to have to come from Danks, Floyd and Jackson...and Peavy actually staying healthy for a full half. If you put up their W-L records and ERA at this point in the season, nobody would believe we'd be 4 GB, along with the stat lines for Thornton, Beckham, Dunn, Rios and Pierre's own SB/CS fiasco after leading the AL in thefts last season. Humber and Buehrle are both pitching to the best of their ability, or probably over it in Humber's case.

There's the theory. Besides Konerko, Humber, AJ and Lillibridge, the odds are better that almost all of our players will be BETTER than they were in the first half. Of course, the possibility of injury (or reinjury in Peavy's case) is always there, we've been very very healthy for most of the way compared to DET, CLE and Minnesota. The schedule is weighted more towards our AL Central opponents and also more home games. However, we haven't played well at home, Dunn will continue to get booed there if he doesn't hit or get injured/DL'ed somehow...and obviously we have to beat DET and MIN head-to-head and continue to play at least "even" with Cleveland. I still don't see how 1983 or 1993 or 2003 has anything to do with this year's team. 2008-2010 are probably much more relevant for this current group of players. Our results during that timeframe in the 2nd half are at best, spotty. Obviously room for lots of improvement, but they're going to have to break through their mental "blocks" against the Central, there's no getting around it.

"The guy's out by at least 15 feet," Tracy said. But no. Smith had two options: Air-mail the throw or long-hop it, giving Iannetta a chance to catch it and brace for the inevitable collision. The Rockies' Ty Wiggington was picked off first base to end the fourth inning Wednesday at Coors Field. (Karl Gehring, The Denver Post)"I was trying to make it a longer hop," Smith said. "Running in and not knowing exactly where you are on the field makes it a little tough, but I would like to have made a better throw. It's baseball. There's no sense digging into it more than this. We just got beat." Read more: White Sox beat Rockies 3-2 on sacrifice fly in ninth inning - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/rockies/ci_18380917#ixzz1QjZJ1KXz Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jun 29, 2011 -> 09:52 PM) 1.) I don't know if Cox deserves credit because he should have been out by the proverbial mile. All the outfielder had to do was throw a simple lob toss and the runner was dead. But ... it worked and Rios would have made out, so the Cox decision worked. But it took a horrible, horrible throw to get the run in. I hope if we ever start hitting again, Cox does not send one of our plodders home on a bloop pop to right in a similar situation. 2.) I agree. This team has been so bad and is only six or seven back in the loss column. The only hope for me personally is somehow we start hitting home runs in bunches the second half. Really our team has not changed. It's the long ball or nothing. No team speed whatsoever now that Juan can't steal a base. The power hitters have to blast homers and so do the Lexi's and Beckham's and Rios'es and Dunn's or we're going nowhere offensively. 5 games behind CLE and only 4 behind DET in the loss column

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 29, 2011 -> 09:20 PM) and even more than that, who do we have who should regress? Humber? Maybe Konerko? Lillibridge. Bruney, I guess. But he does have something of a prior track record of success in the big leagues. You'd like to think Santos could continue at his current save conversion rate. Seemingly, he's gotten over the hump after that recent rough stretch. Not to mention the possibilty of adding Viciedo. But Peavy could get hurt, of course....or Danks struggling all season long with that oblique. Konerko's the ONLY hitter you would expect not to play better than he has been. Maybe AJ the last month, he's due to cool down a bit. Quentin's really been streaking/slumping, as is usual with him.