caulfield12

QUOTE (docsox24 @ Jun 16, 2011 -> 01:49 PM) I would like to see what a guy like that would look like out there. Andy Gonzalez?

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Jun 16, 2011 -> 01:49 PM) Players drafted after Beckham: Smoak, Wallace, Weeks, Lawrie, Ike Davis. All are better prospects than Beckham, who's talent was greatly exaggerated. Greatly exaggerated by all his peers who voted him as the best rookie of 2009??? It's pretty easy to be down on him now, but things always even out. Maybe a new coaching staff/hitting coach will change things up for him. Carlos Gonzalez isn't exactly lighting the world on this fire, either. Does he suck and his ability has been overexaggerated a bit? I can't imagine what you'd be saying had we taken Tim Beckham and he was still foundering in the minors. Well, one things for sure, Blackburn's more than gotten his revenge for Game 163 by now. Jesus.

It's a wee bit premature to be giving up on Mitchell as well. With how some gave up on Viciedo after 2009...you would think there would be some patience...especially with the "rushing" of Beckham and Sale now being consistently raised as an issue in a bit of 20/20 hindsight revisionism. Nobody was complaining about Beckham being rushed in 2009 or Sale last year in August. In fact, many thought Ozzie and KW were too hesitant to bring up Beckham.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 16, 2011 -> 01:43 PM) The shame of it is that Buehrle really is pitching a hell of a game. And hasn't given up more than 3 runs in ANY game since April 28th.

QUOTE (elrockinMT @ Jun 16, 2011 -> 01:41 PM) I am no batting expert but I was watching some games where a hitch in his swing is mentioned and then shown. I know it's hard to change your approach over nigbht, but if it is shown by broadcasters on TV do you think GB also sees it later? Well, the new "spin" on Beckham is that Farmer and DJ keep claiming he's he best defensive 2B in the American League, so an OPS 200+ points lower than we expected out of him is now acceptable.

Recipe to beat the White Sox. 1) Don't respect them at all 2) Run at will on everyone but Buehrle 3) Simply throw a sinker over the plate and induce a double play to clear the bases 4) Pick off Pierre if he's ever on base, run for the extra base if you hit the ball in his direction 5) Erase from your memory that Dunn, Rios and Beckham were once all-star caliber players when facing them 6) No matter how many errors you make, they won't capitalize, so just relax if you're playing defense 7) Very few Sox runners can score from 2nd on a base hit or 3rd from a sac fly...so make their hitters put 3 hits together in an inning

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Jun 16, 2011 -> 01:23 PM) I'm more sad about Holmberg than Hudson. Because he was included as well or because you believe he'll actually be better? Really?

Note to White Sox. Blackburn will throw centercut fastballs at 90 MPH to start off most AB's. God, Rios is amazingly predictable. Sure, he hit the ball hard in that first appearance but he's paid to produce. Same with Dunn. And a timely base hit from Beckham wouldn't be too bad, either.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jun 16, 2011 -> 10:07 AM) Should Phil Humber be asking to pitch on 3 days rest today? Should he say "Forget Mark Buehrle, I should be pitching today cause I'm better than him!" I'm sure they do look forward to attempting to beat their divsion rival, but you can't step on the toes of your rotation mates like that. I just find the fact that they were FINALLY working in the morning before the game on the slidestep with Gavin a bit disconcerting. Even more troubling is the "it is what it is" attitude about our attempts by pitchers to hold runners and/or AJ's ability to throw them out. No problems with Buehrle starting at all. That's not my point. It's just that we never, EVER seem to learn from past mistakes against this team. Liriano could be out there on the mound and our batters would be taking swings like it was the first time they'd ever faced him. Oops, they already did that the last couple of times they faced him. You thought with Santana and Radke gone, Liriano and Nathan injured....that sooner or later our luck would have changed. It's like that classic movie "Groundhog Day" although not nearly as amusing. I halfway expect to see the ghosts of Lew Ford, Denny Hocking, LeCroy, Corey Koskie, Mike Redmond, Henry Blanco, Nick Punto, Jason Bartlett and Jason Tyner taking the field today in a tribute to past triumphs over the Sox. I hate that Peavy's been a disaster with us, but he's at least the type of guy who would publicly accept the challenge of beating them...and confronting this "jinx" we seem to have against the Twins. It's going to have to come from some of the players (or future players) who don't have such long histories of consistently losing against the Twins. Instead of signing aging NL players, we should be signing all ex-Yankees not named Swisher. Or signing Twins players away from Minnie. What other options are left?

Honestly, if we had the Phillies' Big Four as our starting rotation, I'm not 100% sure it would matter against the Twins. As soon as they slipped on White Sox pinstripes, the "Twins Fear" would creep into them. Maybe they all need Green Lantern rings to counteract the effects.

QUOTE (Soxfest @ Jun 16, 2011 -> 09:44 AM) Can we win a game against the undermaned Twins please! If the Twins were either horses at Arlington or nascent members in the Hair Club for men, they'd still be owning us. No, no, no to Mark Teahen!!!!! Konerko has to play. Unless you're sticking him in LF for Pierre. In which case, you just KNOW about 5+ balls would be hit his way which he would play into doubles and triples. Whatever weakness they have to exploit against us, they always seem to find it and hammer us into submission.

I guess Cooper simply wasn't able to get through to him....for some reason, with young pitchers, that "change of scenery" trade to a non-contending team in a division with spacious ballparks and fewer offensive standouts seems to work wonders. I was trying to think of a comparison and Kip Wells came to mind right away. I guess we'll find out in the second half of this season if Hudson has the cojones to pitch in a real pennant race this time around. It's pretty hard to argue (even to his biggest supporters) that Hudson was going to get things turned around last year in the heat of the race. Perhaps they could have waited 2-3 more starts to give him a fairer shot, but the way he pitched in those outings...KW obviously got caught up in the moment, just like the rest of us after that 26-5 run (along with sole possession of first place) and thought it was possible for them to sustain that momentum and go even farther.

Not to mention there's SOME semblance of hope for the future with Dayan up. Pierre has ZERO future in this organization. I'd almost rather see KWJR leading off for the White Sox than Pierre...!!! If he's stowed away in AAA or traded, what the heck do we have to look forward to offensively the next 3-5 years? The next Matt LaPorta that we'll inevitably acquire for John Danks in trade?

Why don't we have any pitchers in our organization "champing at the bit" to pitch against the Twins...saying they look forward to the challenge of beating them? Who actually want to have their starts or order in the rotation changed around specifically so they can face Minnie? It's almost like nobody wants to acknowledge the elephant in the room....so whether they blow these series up bigger than life or downplay it like they're facing the Pirates or Mariners, it doesn't seem to matter, as far as the end results go.

So essentially, the parameters should be any team with a .500 record or above the last 2-3 years (or longer) having a string where they're only winning 20% (or less) of the games between two teams (7-27). I'm sure there are some examples....but not very many....where you could name teams with payrolls of over $100 million (besides the Mets or Cubs) playing so poorly against a division opponent. It's not the only record on the road. It's the failure in the 2nd half of seasons so frequently. 2002 6-9 after All-Star Break 2003 2-5 after All-Star Break 2004 2-7 after All-Star Break 2005 7-6 after All-Star Break 2006 2-7 after All-Star Break 2007 4-2 after All-Star Break (that was a weird anomaly of a season for both teams) 2008 2-6 after All-Star Break (including Game 163) 2009 1-8 after All-Star Break 2010 3-10 after All-Star Break So that's a 29-60 record over a period of nearly a decade. Home and away. Winning only 32.5% of the most important games against our biggest division rival. 4-18 (18%) over the last two seasons.

Greg, sometimes I don't understand why you think it's your role to defend Ozzie or Bobby Jenks or Juan Pierre. Is everyone disappointed in Beckham and Rios and Dunn and Peavy? Of course, but realistically, we know we're pretty much stuck with all of those guys for the duration of their contracts. As someone else mentioned, players like Rios with all the talent in the world but none of the courage/fearlessness/drive/heart drive me nuts. If you put Juan Pierre's "head" in Rios, you'd have a superstar. Unfortunately, we're stuck with Juan's drive in a body that's been beaten up and abused for too many seasons....you could probably say the same thing about AJ. Maybe we'll see glimpses of the former player, but not on an extended basis. So because of his caught stealings, lack of arm, atrocious defense THIS year, lack of walks, lack of power, lack of ability to sacrifice bunt....what tool of the five does he still possess? Unless he's hitting at .300 or above, he's not bringing anything to the table. In his best incarnation at this point of his career, he's still in the bottom quartile of AL LFer's in terms of production. And then there are those frustrated he's getting so many AB's, that Ozzie keeps defending him (he's THE reason, basically, that Viciedo isn't up), that Lillibridge hasn't been given more opportunities when he's clearly outplaying Juan at 1/50th the salary. Add all these things up....Juan Pierre will be okay as a man, as a person, no matter how this year turns out. He's one of the good guys in baseball, hardest workers....it's almost because he represents everything that is good, that's standing in the way of his being benched or waived. If he was pouting like Swisher or isolating himself from the media and teammates like O-Cabrera, this wouldn't be so painful for everyone watching the soap opera from a distance.

Green Lantern, not as good as Thor, but the complete disaster that critics are falling all over themselves to describe. Still, odds are at least 50/50 that the suggest sequel at the end of the movie never gets made....not with that $300 million plus budget. My first thoughts when the movie started 1) aren't there just one too many superhero movies in the marketplace this year? and 2) I can't believe audiences are putting up with the 3-D upcharges without significant viewing experiencement enhancement. Overall, I thought Reynolds was pretty close to the perfect actor to cast in that role. Blake Lively, I found myself wishing she went back to blonde hair...I guess fighter pilots/corporate executives with blond hair can't be taken seriously unless they're Pepper Potts. It kind of felt like a cross between Thor, the Star Wars movies (the Jedi training sequences) and Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystall Skull. I also couldn't believe that the same director responsible for CASINO ROYALE put this movie out there, with an immense budget. The four screenwriters working together (one of them originally was going to direct) kind of turn this whole thing into a hodge-podge, but it was still "watchable." I wasn't thinking it was Speed Racer or something that was just immensely, egregiously bad. Overall, the international box office and opening weekend might save the franchise, but don't count on it. With all that said, I think Reynolds (like Hemsworth as Thor) did as good a job as possible with the material in front of him. He has qualities that an actor like Chris Evans doesn't possess on screen, although perhaps Captain America will change my mind. At least in Fantastic 4, he really irritated me. Reynolds, like George Clooney, has that way of being smug and overconfident...but still being likeable at the same time.

Off to see if the GREEN LANTERN equals the White Sox in overall suckiness against MINN. Supposedly, it does.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 15, 2011 -> 08:21 PM) My gosh, the Santos loss to the A's might be the most shocking loss I can remember. The Dodgers one sucked too....because that was his first run given up, I think, all season long. And it was a solo line drive screamer right down the LF line, didn't even give you a chance to get stressed with walks, hit batters, wild pitches, dinks/dunks. The A's losses sucked (although they always seem to have our number)....definitely the Tampa Bay blown game when they were 0 for the season.

What else is new? What I don't understand is why Floyd was still in the game at that point with our bullpen so well-rested? Makes absolutely zero sense. It's almost like the Twins WANTED to tease us into getting our hopes up....only to shut the door. You just know that we'd have blown the save or we'd have left the tying/winning runs at 2nd and 3rd and Minny would have gone on to smoke us in the following game, had Santos been out there with a 4-1 lead. Baseball is always a game of momemtum....coupled with our miseries against Minnesota, you have to feel Daniel Hudson will no hit us now to add insult to injury.

QUOTE (southsideirish71 @ Jun 15, 2011 -> 08:09 PM) The twins from the time they draft a person have a common language, and common development plan across their entire organization. They teach kids how to play the game right. Run hard, make contact, and play good defense. They might not be the best talented organization in the majors, but they get the most out of what they have. We perform no valuable instruction anywhere in our minor leagues outside of pitchers. You can strike out at a 35% clip and play little to not defense and get promoted. Huge holes in your swing and no defense, dont worry the next level will help you out. Then they get to the majors and we watch them with terrible mechanics and an inability to play sound fundamental baseball. That in a nutshell is the difference in the two teams. All in Kenny is going to get anxious soon and pull the trigger on a deal if this gets goofy. He cant piss the season away for prospects. He has to go all in. So I would say that there is a better chance that Viciedo gets spun for a reliever of some sort than Pierre gets released and Viciedo is in LF. The irony is the one impact bat the White Sox have developed in half a decade and we won't even play him. But we spent plenty of time with Borchard, Fields, Anderson, Getz, Andy Gonzalez, Owens, etc., getting more at-bats when Dayan actually showed the ability to hit from the moment he was recalled.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 15, 2011 -> 08:10 PM) Tigers, no doubt about it Unless Mauer or Morneau are ever close to 100% this season....but the Tigers have so many more holes (when you get past the top of their rotation) compared to some of their better teams of the past decade.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 15, 2011 -> 08:09 PM) More specifically the pitchers didn't want to have him behind the plate. So basically Olivo was like Javy Lopez, except with a gun for an arm.

Well, if the Indians hold on to beat DET, we're still only 4 1/2 games back. Great play by Beckham, there. I'm not sure which team is more dangerous though....Minnesota or the Tigers?

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 15, 2011 -> 08:01 PM) I'll never understand why we didn't try to upgrade our catching position by going after Olivo. There had to be some "internal" issues between the front office, Ozzie and Olivo....supposedly, there were some things going on there behind the scenes that we never heard about. My perception was that they were very unhappy with his gamecalling and just didn't trust him to work by himself "out on an island" with the pitching staff. It would have made sense. But I have a feeling either KW or Ozzie (probably) or both were against bringing him back.