caulfield12

Almost starting to wonder if it wouldn't be better to use Jordan Danks or Tyler Flowers as the DH. It's gotten THAT bad. Or Teahen, he's probably the first internal option, after Viciedo. Lillibridge definitely needs to stay ensconced in his role.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jun 26, 2011 -> 09:39 AM) I interpreted "The added twist of the nazis" and "Were more of a subplot of the Xmen" to mean that it was strange to see the Nazis in a Captain America feature No, I meant the theory is that Captain America will do much better because there's more of a fascination with the Nazi's than the Cold War/Cuban Missile Crisis/Russia. I just threw out those movies because they came to mind right away. The movies themselves, of course, are very dissimilar in and of themselves. The prevailing notion is that "period comics" don't do as well (in general)...to cite another example, The Watchmen. In the end, the saturation point has been reached with the second and third tier comic book heroes. With Batman, Spiderman and the Avengers, the studios are going back to the "wheelhouse" franchises that are almost guaranteed to succeed instead of spending $75-150 million marketing Thor or The Green Lantern into relevancy. Green Lantern isn't doing well at all overseas, compared to Thor's earlier track record. Both have relatively unknown leads, and certainly Reynolds (because of The Proposal if nothing else) is more familiar to audiences than Chris Hemsworth.

QUOTE (bucket-of-suck @ Jun 26, 2011 -> 09:34 PM) The Tigers don't have dominant starting pitching. They have a dominant starting pitcher. Scherzer has had very good stretches. Who would you take off our current staff over him for the next 3 seasons?

QUOTE (gatnom @ Jun 26, 2011 -> 08:46 PM) I understand what you're saying, but KW was the one who took on these gambles. It's like signing a free agent to a lucrative contract; injuries and poor performance are a definite possibility. He acquired Peavy while injured, and Peavy has more or less stayed injured for that duration. Rios has been terrible for the majority of the time he's been here. The fact of the matter is that KW has been in a massive, massive slump over the past three years, and that is part of the reason we are not in the greatest shape at the moment (though definitely still in it). What was the last trade KW actually won? Quentin for Carter? Now obviously the jury is still out on a couple of the trades since then, but the Swisher, Jackson, Teahen, and Pierre trades have all been losses while the Peavy and Rios deals continue to look poor. I'll put it another way. Let's say KW is Bill Miller, a legendary mutual fund manager who beat the S&P average 13 years in a row (no, I won't argue the equivalent is the White Sox winning 13 AL Central championships consecutively, but let's just say their performances are similar, before 2009). Then the stock market crashes....but your fund is STILL performing in the bottom quartile or quintile. Do you excuse it due to "market conditions," meaning that Rios/Peavy/Dunn/Teahen/Linebrink/Pierre, Swisher 1 & 2, Javy, Jackson/Hudson, were all "reasonable" trades at the moments they were made? Do you move your money to another manager...ignoring his past track record, chasing one of the hot young prospects from another hedge fund? Do you hire someone internally (Hahn), someone who's learned the ropes from this former genius...in your belief that KW's style of operating is conducive to putting together a long-term winning team? Or that a combination of his risk-taking and a more measured, statistical/analytical approach is the best combination. In real life, I'm still leaving some of my eggs in this basket (Legg Mason), because I can't ignore those 13 years of results and seeing things that others didn't see. Still, I'm hedging my bets and making lots of other bets because I can't trust Miller due to his overall abysmal performance the last 3-4 years. On the other hand, everyone can be in a slump or lose their confidence (see Dunn)....the question is will that person recover his former magic touch? You never like to sell low and buy high...and that's the position we're in with retaining KW, Ozzie and nearly 1/3rd of our roster at this point.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jun 26, 2011 -> 07:02 PM) I don't boo players except Jaime Navarro, but I do think people have the right to boo someone making a ton of money playing a game. If its too much, I'm sure Adam has made more money already this year than millions will make in a lifetime, he can go home. That said, when the game begins, Dunn is not booed. He's not booed when they announce the line ups. He's not booed when he's announced as the hitter, he's booed when he strikes out, and we haven't seen this rate of strikeouts for a long time. It looked to me like Friday night he may have something to build on, but something is very wrong. He's late on 86 MPH fastballs. He's fanned 16 times his last 6 games. He has 11 games with at least 3 strikeouts. He's only had 9 games with at least 3 plate appearances where he hasn't struck out at least once. Farmer's been on the fans for this, and it goes something like "booing a guy will never help him out of a slump (it will only make things worse...)" What will his family, his children attending the game think about Chicago fans? He's a part of the White Sox family...it's our responsibility to support him. How does being negative help the situation? DJ's response was more like "it goes with the territory...when you're scuffling or playing under your expected level of performance, you know it's coming." Just have to take it an at-bat at a time and slowly put together a good game, then a good streak of positive at-bats, etc. Get back to basics, see the ball, hit the ball. Basically, the fans are paying good money for tickets and its their right to express their feelings and emotions, as long as they're not profane or disrupting others' enjoyment of the game. I never thought at any point in this season I'd be much more concerned about Dunn than either Rios or Peavy, that's for sure.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 26, 2011 -> 06:34 PM) In my opinion, it's two different situations. 2006, the Sox played like they were one of the top two or three teams in baseball for an extended stretch. That run during interleague play in 2006 was as exciting a Sox team as there's been for me since I've been a fan. This year, we just haven't come close to putting it all together. Still time though, but let's face it, if you have 3, 4 or 5 hitters in your everyday lineup struggle all season, it wasn't meant to be. Good news is we're still in it when we could have been 10 out by now. And those Tigers and Twins teams were flat out good or better than us that season. We ran out of gas. But the first half, we just crushed teams. I remember, in particular, feeling sorry almost for the Cardinals. We were a juggernaut. 26 games over .500 and yet the Tigers were there with us every step of the way. And then the Twins with their amazing stretch. I can't imagine anyone expected the 2011 team to be nearly as good as 2006. I was hoping for 88-90 wins, but wasn't sure that would be enough to win the division. In some ways, I was more excited going into 2009 because I was buying into the hype that Viciedo would be ready to contribute right away. And I thought the Twins "fear" was past us with the breakthrough in Game 163. This year, the Tigers have that dominant starting pitching, closer, and they have Boesch, Avila, Cabrera and V-Mart, but their offensive punch is nothing compared to what it was 3-5 years ago. They used to have dangerous hitters at every spot in the line-up. Magglio's on his last legs, too.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jun 26, 2011 -> 06:55 PM) Rongey with the return on the investment crap is just spewing what he believes to be the company line. He also stated that one hitter isn't going to make a difference. So I suppose he probably believes that if Adam Dunn was hitting like most thought he would instead of how he actually is, since he is only one guy, it really wouldn't matter. He can't really believe that. I bet you if you got him hammered and he was spilling the truth, he would tell you it was time for Juan Pierre to either sit down or go home. That was the convenient excuse when it was Anderson/Owens/Wise/Erstad out there in CF, or Kotsay DHing with Jones (over Thome), but this year, there's 5 holes in our line-up. Surely, logic dictates that we have good enough pitching to win our division, clearly. Heck, we have more quality starts than any team in baseball since 2003. You can't do much about Rios, so you have four places to fine-tune (especially since Rios seems to be showing lots of tangible signs of improvement, including another wind-blocked homer today). This leaves you, obviously, with Morel, Beckham, Dunn and Pierre. Morel's a rookie, he's still yet to show that 700-ish OPS power and his OBP is a mess, but he seems to do more harm than good at least when he's out on the field. Realistically, you can't play Teahen or expect Omar to repeat last year's stretch. That only leaves Pierre, Dunn and Beckham. Something's gotta give.

QUOTE (FlySox87 @ Jun 26, 2011 -> 06:24 PM) Jake Peavy didn't reveal himself as a total china doll until after he came to our side. There was nothing in his history with the Padres to suggest that he was more fragile than...well, something that's really fragile. And the Alex Rios acquisition looked brilliant last year. It's not KW's fault the guy stunk to start this year. Jackson might have been a dumb call, but the jury's still out on what Hudson's going to amount to. Our scouts were never all that convinced, IIRC. And how about all the players he acquired that have really panned out for us? Floyd, Danks, Crain, Thornton, Humber, AJ, Alexei, Quentin...and that's just this year. I guess you can blame him for not strong-arming Ozzie into benching Dunn, but I would say that's more Ozzie's fault than his. Ozzie needs to have some sense and bench someone who's struggling that bad. KW shouldn't have to intrude on Ozzie's job description and handle his business for him. That being said, I will respect KW even more when he just fires Ozzie outright and hires someone who will do the job correctly. According to Chris Rongey, no team in major league baseball would bench Adam Dunn. Since that seems to be the front office/institutionalized thinking on the subject, that he certainly won't break out of this by sitting, why doesn't KW force him to the DL with some flimsy reason and call up Viciedo? On our current roster, who's a better candidate to replace Dunn? Lillibridge? Really? As an everyday DH? And that's a great recipe for the future when Lilly is overexposed at this position and then you have no choice but to eventually go back to Dunn? Viciedo can't cover 2 positions, eventually he has to replace Pierre. Ozzie benched Nick Swisher in 2008 and it worked, in a way, because we hung on to win the division. In another way, it was a disaster, because we were forced to dump Swisher's contract for nothing in return when he'd cost us three of our top prospects. So that's the potential cost....we bench Dunn and risk making him a drag on the roster for 2012, 2013 and 2014. Certainly you can't think the trades of Swisher and Javy brought us back a very good return. And in the process, we lost one of the best young LH pitching prospects in baseball, arguably an even more valuable pitcher than Daniel Hudson. What happens to GM's when every gamble they take turns out badly, even if it's "not their fault." Should you give credit to Ozzie for "nurturing" those players like Danks/Ramirez/Quentin/Thornton/Floyd/Santos/Viciedo/Humber along? Would they have done so well in an another organization? Humber's bounced around to something like 4 or 5 teams. Even the Twins. And yet he's found success with Cooper. And Cooper goes/stay with Ozzie, wherever he is...how many organizations would Santos successfully be closing for? You have Peavy, Rios, Dunn, 2 Swisher trades, the Javy trade, the Hudson/Jackson trade. Everything KW has done since the end of 2008 has turned to crap EXCEPT getting Viciedo and Santos. Even Beckham (the "surest" home-grown prospect since Thomas/Ventura) and Mitchell's fate in the minors now is very much up in the air as well. If you want, you can put Chris Sale in the "win" column but the jury's still far from out on that one as well.

"There isn't a single team in baseball that would bench Adam Dunn." Rongey

The White Sox had won 17 interleague series in a row before today. Listening to Ozzie, he said he had a sit down with Dunn and KW even came in to say they weren't panicking, that the front office was behind him. Ozzie says "he can't bench that guy," he's paid too much to sit, so many millions of dollars, etc. Seems like he's still determined to play Dunn once or twice against Colorado and the Cubs at 1B or RF. Didn't even know anything about Santiago, like what pitches he threw...."he's another Puerto Rican kid from New York," great Ozzie. Acknowledged he doesn't know much about the minor leaguers, haha.

Saw highlight of Espinoza's homer...that stadium is really empty in the lower level down by the foul poles. I think the business side of "All In" has to come back into the conversation soon enough. Ozzie's not going to be able to keep starting Dunn much longer at home. Hopefully he'll go off on the fans again and say something that's a finally a fireable offense because there's no other way to get Pierre out of that line-up.

Livan Hernandez was the Grand Marshal of the 1997 Orange Bowl Parade. Little known fact, there. Everyone needs to bombard RONGEY with Adam Dunn calls. I'm even tired of Farmer's "booing him doesn't make him play any better" line. 7-5 in interleague's not going to get it done.

Teahen wasn't LIKELY to do anything against a LHP, but I'm not so sure Lilly versus Storen is a much better match-up. We'll see. Nope, not so much. Lillibridge is falling back to earth, finally.

Why would we ever think they weren't going to start the inning with Storen? McLaren called that bluff. You'd rather have Lillibridge versus Storen than Teahen versus LHP Burnett. I guess. That's the argument. So Alexei will hit next, then Pierre.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 26, 2011 -> 03:52 PM) Maggs, can you call up the postgame show just so we can hear Rongey say "you don't ph for someone with Dunn's pedigree?" I love that line. Sale's looked fantastic today, which is always something that warms my heart. I think I'm going to call in from the Philippines and pose that question. Sucks to see 2 1/2 GB flip to 4 1/2 in the span of about 5 minutes. We absolutely can't let the Tigers get too far in front of us. Their offense has a lot of holes, but Verlander just about looks unbeatable unless he ends up on the DL.

I'm going to predict we see PH'ers for Teahen and Beckham, but definitely not for Pierre.

They better let Lillibridge or Alexei Ramirez hit in the 9th. God, could this offense suck any more, with the exception of Konerko?

Dammit, that stupid wind has cost us homers by Konerko and Rios. Figures.

We have to be worst in the majors in going 1st to 3rd and 2nd to home. Rizzo was on talking about how their goal (Washington) in the offseason was to improve in this specific area, as well as the defense. It seems like we're getting worse and worse in this area, if that's possible. Of course, Juan Pierre now has locked up playing time for another week, SIGH.

Dammit Ozzie...we can't go down 4-1. Yeah yeah yeah, Teahen brought us back once from that deficit, but it's not a habit you want to go get into when you have Pierre, Dunn, Beckham, Vizquel, Teahen, etc. No need for Viciedo, though. Unless he's on that 25 man roster, KW.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 26, 2011 -> 03:10 PM) I give all the credit in the world to these stats...but yeah, I've gotta dispute you a bit there. The B-R guys are very good. The world's best math people are a different level. Are you saying they're quants working on derivatives? Long Term Capital Management Group? Counting cards in Vegas?

Tigers now breaking it wide open, up 5-2 and still batting. Peralta's career has been resuscitated, he looked he like he headed out of baseball the last couple of seasons in CLE with his offensive struggles combined with lack of range and defensive ability.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jun 26, 2011 -> 03:06 PM) WAR to me is a boring card game that some people actually, foolishly play in Vegas. To play that game at a table in Vegas is taking your money and ripping it to shreds. WAR, what is it good for? absolutely nothing! Reminds me of Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in Rush Hour, haha.

3-2 Tigers. That's what happens when you walk Casper Wells and Magglio Ordonez before Miguel Cabrera. Not a good idea.

Uh-oh, Tigers in danger of tying or going ahead. Two walks in the 8th, including .186 Magglio Ordonez on 4 pitches. Bases loaded with 2 outs, down 2-1.