caulfield12

Be careful. Ryan's pretty dangerous.

Do we really have to put up with Alex Rios for 3 1/2 more years? I'd much rather have Lillibridge in CF and Dunn in the line-up. 75-80% more confident that Dunn will eventually figure it out than Rios. Interesting in all the JR quotes that he's said very little about Rios or Peavy.

Their "high water" mark of the season since 7-4 and that ugly 4-18 stretch of baseball (filled with numerous bullpen and defensive meltdowns) to follow...now "only" 5 1/2 games back. We had an even bigger margin at the 2003 All-Star Break.

http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1229040 The comments on Walker will add more fuel to the fire for detractors of the Sox scouting department. But who knows, I really liked the Mitchell draft pick and it's not like the White Sox have any control over freak injuries like that happening.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jun 7, 2011 -> 08:59 AM) I miss stuff like that, but I sort of understand it. I think that's the hope of the organization. Honestly, I don't mind this draft philosophy. Draft athletes who project to CF (or SS, though they haven't done that yet) who can grow into their bodies. If they grow so big and get good enough offensively, you can switch positions. If you draft a 1B at 47 overall, you better know that dude is either going to hit 30 homers a year or is going to rise quickly. Having multiple tools doesn't hurt. Thought I read he had a good arm too. Seems to me Walker at the moment is a 20/40 Bat 20/35 Power 75/80 Speed 40/80 Field 60/80 Arm The two that bug me the most are the bat and power. Those, especially the bat, are the most easily coached and able to go above the initial scouting report. If they can develop him into a 50 bat with a decent eye at the plate, then the rest is golden. The stealing will translate over time and the fielding and arm will get better through mere repetition. Hope and pray that the worst case scenario is Carlos Gomez. At least then, if he's still broadcasting (and alive, quite frankly), Hawk will be able to gush about how big of a Twins kills Keenyn Walker in. http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/players/7562 Can we starting getting some credit for developing this guy? Typical "big athlete" who never really profiled as a true SS and ended up getting moved all over the field. His power was questionable for a corner infielder or outfielder. Seems like he's finally found a home at age 29.

On the plus side, they're something like 12-1 or 13-1 against the M's at USCF since 2008. That sub .500 stat is a little bit misleading, we've beaten up the Mariners pretty good and they're now just 2 games over that mark and were below .500 when we played them in Seattle at the start of the West Coast road trip.

Didn't work so well with Royce Ring and Aaron Poreda.

Quentin's going to have a 50+ double season. Thank god we didn't let him go or we'd have no offense this year to go with Paulie and Alexei. I'm calling Greg out for jinxing Santos. LOL. He never jinxed Jenks when he blew games against SEA or various critical Twins/Sox games in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

It's pretty amazing with that offense that they've won 15/20 and Ichiro has been hitting around .170 during that time. Pineda and Hernandez help, but their bullpen over the last 5 seasons hasn't been able to protect that many leads on a consistent basis.

Well, at least Chicago can be proud of contributing 5 or 6 out of the worst ten contracts in baseball. Can't believe I was almost rooting for Dunn to strike out...instead of hitting into a DP. Now an error. He's falling into Cory Snyder/Steve Sax/Jaime Navarro territory.

I don't care much one way or the other anymore about Peavy, but at least he wants to win. Same with Pierre and AJ. I do wish we'd see a little more of this same sense of pride out of Rios, Dunn and Teahen. They're all getting paid multi-millions of dollars to be professionals, and yet they don't SEEM to care all that much about not being in shape or being prepared for the season. Same thing with Jenks the last couple of seasons with the Sox. At least Peavy and Jenks don't "shrink" from the big moment and trying to get it done. For Bobby, maybe he's learning a dose of humility after being able to get by on talent alone for the first half of his big league career. Starting to wonder if maybe it's NOT a coincidence how often players like Orlando Cabrera and Juan Uribe end up on winning teams. KW always has this philosophy that just assembling talent (Edwin Jackson also comes to mind) and throwing it together will magically work and create chemistry (by winning, or winning, by assembling a roster of talented individuals) and it has rarely worked out that way for us.

QUOTE (kitekrazy @ Jun 6, 2011 -> 02:02 AM) Is it that difficult for a NL hitter to transition to the AL? Adrian Gonzalez says "not so much"

At least Beckham battled him and helped to elevate his pitch count. If we just had decent seasons from Rios, Dunn and Thornton, we'd be running away from the division. Then again, who could have expected Lillibridge to far outhomer Dunn and hit higher than him in the line-up? But the even bigger joke is Rios with the mid 500's OPS in the heart of the order. I'd almost rather have Pierre there than Rios.

Has anyone seen "Win/Win," the Paul Giamatti movie where the adopts the champion wrestler?

For the first 7-8 years of his career, Thomas and Griffey, Jr., were arguably the biggest stars. Piazza was pretty high up there, too. Before them, you had Puckett/Gwynn/Ripken/Boggs, that generation of players. Griffey was definitely #1 to me, and then the injuries hit both guys. And, not coincidentally, that's the same time that Sosa/McGwire had their historic 1998 season and Bonds broke the HR record not long afterwards. The fact that Thomas didn't get to play in that 1994 post-season really hurt, too, in terms of national exposure in his prime. If you look at all those huge homer guys from 1998-2006, how many of them have emerged as completely clean? Thome...Thomas, and Griffey, and that's about it.

X-Men: First Class was quite a bit better than I'd expected. Thought McAvoy and Fassbender were excellent in their respective roles, and it's always easy to hate Kevin Bacon. To me, the Pirates of the Caribbean movie has been the most disappointing so far, with the Hangover 2 a close second. I guess it just depends on your perspective...if you come into it never having seen the original, it's not bad. It's one of those movies where the expectations lead to the usual disappointment, although it wasn't horrible and nothing like the critics have claimed. The movies I really want to see now are The Tree of Life, Midnight in Paris and Bridesmaids. Here in the Philippines, they're still showing the awful "Dylan Dog" so it's that or Kung Fu Panda 2 if I want to watch an English language movie in the theatres.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Jun 1, 2011 -> 02:44 AM) http://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfx.aspx?play...&position=P His velos have stayed the same basically. His cutter has gained a few MPH, but everything else is pretty much the same. However, this year he is throwing his fastball 6% less than career avg, his cutter slightly less, his changeup 9% more than any other year, and his slider almost 5x as much. AJ must call a better game than he ex-battery mates. If AJ has anything to do with turning things around with Humber this year, he's pretty much worth his salary. Although I'm guessing most would prefer to give credit to Don Cooper. Also, does anyone believe that Tyler Flowers would have had the same effect? I guess we'll never know. But you can be pretty sure that KW wasn't willing to risk it in an "All In" year, so to speak. On that subject, has anyone seen quotes from Humber about who he credits for his turnaround? Just having the confidence of being presented the opportunity to have a regular slot in a rotation? He's probably never going to put up a 725 OPS again, but AJ has been a lot better recently. It took until last year, when he was with the Kansas City Royals, for Humber to believe again. ‘‘I think I turned a corner last year with Kansas City,’’ Humber said. ‘‘They gave me a chance. I felt comfortable. It’s about relaxing. Sometimes I put too much pressure on myself. It’s relaxing and letting things work for you. I don’t think I shook off A.J. [Pierzynski] more than once or twice.’’ Pierzynski said Humber, whom the Sox claimed from the Oakland Athletics in January, made it easy. ‘‘He was great,’’ Pierzynski said. ‘‘The way the game ended Friday [a ninth-inning loss] especially, he just shut them down. He was the story of the game.’’ Toni Ginetti, Chicago Sun-Times

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jun 1, 2011 -> 01:33 AM) Well, that would be a bit aggressive I suppose. Especially in our ballpark. Perhaps a 3.75 - 4.00 or so would be a safer guess. I do think he has the stuff to do it. And I do think if he were to pitch to that it's fair to say he could be a #2. Put it this way...I think he's closer to a #2 than a #4. Let's assume for a moment that he can fulfill the potential he had when he was drafted. #4 starters are not normally drafted #3 overall in the draft. #1-#2 pitchers normally are. Call me a believer. I'll split the difference with you and call him a 3. There have been a lot of arguments about Danks and Floyd, and what they legitimately should be defined as...there are probably 10-20 statistics you could throw at it, but I have always preferred to think for a 1 or 2 starter that as a fan, you always feel about 80-85% confident they'll win every time they go out on the mound. With Humber, you're starting to feel that same level of confidence he'll throw a quality start and/or keep the ballclub in the game, but I think there's no way you can begin calling him a 2 until he's had 30 starts under his belt. Could he be a 2? Perhaps. You'd like to see a higher strikeout rate...but he does pitch pretty efficiently, compared to Danks this season especially. And you keep waiting for that BABIP number to level out...the Blue Jays' announcers compared him to a "poor man's Pat Hentgen" in terms of his build, his uniform # and his stuff, so anything resembling that would be awesome.

QUOTE (qwerty @ Jun 1, 2011 -> 02:29 AM) Year in, year out? To my knowledge, we've never had a starter pitch that well on a consistent basis since Alvarez, Alex Fernandez and McDowell, I'd guess Buehrle earlier in his career or Danks 08-10 are closest. Not in the steroids age. I would think pitching at a 4.00-4.50 clip would be GREAT for Humber. Anything below 4.00 is simply gravy.

I don't get it. Just because we're all a little like KW and fall in love with guys like Verlander or Edwin Jackson (last year) throwing in the high 90's or even 99-102 late in games (well, Verlander mostly), that doesn't mean we should totally dismiss Humber. Can someone look at his average FB velocity when he started a couple of games for the Mets and Royals in the past? PERHAPS he has let up a little bit on the fastball in order to get both better command and movement? Remember that old tried and true theory that there needs to be a 10+ MPH differential between the fastball and offspeed stuff? As long as that exists, there's no reason he shouldn't be able to be successful. So much of pitching, as we all know, is based on confidence. Obviously, it could all be a mirage, like Jams Baldwin in the first half of 2000, where he had a tremendous amount of balls hit into play were turned into outs before the ASB and later in the season, they became base hits. I remember Jon Garland throwing 92-93 and sometimes 94, but he was always much more successful with the two-seam sinker at 89-91 MPH. Danks, at times, has gotten his FB into the 93-94 MPH range as well, but he usually pitches more effectively when he doesn't overthrow and sacrifices velocity for command. What good is having the highest average fastball on the team if you can't harness your offspeed stuff, like Edwin? He doesn't have that "devastating" type of knockout pitch like Loaiza's cutter or Contreras' forkball, but his curveball is definitely a "plus" pitch right now and that will work with an average fastball (with movement) and one other pitch...every time. By the way, when exactly did Humber have the TJ surgery? Does anyone know? Philip Humber, RHP: With a strong spring, Humber could factor into the wide-open, but still competitive, battle for a Twins rotation spot. Drafted out of Rice University with the third-overall pick in 2004 and signed for a $3 million bonus, his pro career got off to a sluggish start as he posted a 4.99 ERA at Class A Advanced St. Lucie in 2005 before undergoing Tommy John surgery in July. He's yet to really come back in pre-surgery form, but his trademark curveball is still a plus pitch. He spent most of '07 in New Orleans, where he was 11-9 with a 4.27 ERA in 25 starts, striking out 120 batters in 139 innings. He finished the summer with three games in New York, posting a 7.71 ERA in seven innings. He is no longer the untouchable can't-miss prospect he was when he signed in '04, but at 25 years old and now two years removed from his surgery, 2008 could be a big one for him. - Lisa Winston -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So he had TJ in July of 2005 and made it to the big leagues with the Mets two years later...before being included in the Santana deal. It would be interesting to see why a team so noted for their pitching/development (Minnesota) gave up on him so quickly. KC, well, they've always had pitching issues.

Not to mention the fact that Lester has been pretty terrible against the White Sox in his career. It's impossible to believe that they were expecting only 1 or 2 more runs would win the game. I GET the idea that acquiring a lead or being the first to score out of the gate sets the momentum for the team and builds confidence, but we're not talking the 2005, 2006 or even 2008 White Sox here. The interesting thing is that the more you read about KW and Hahn, the less you get the idea that philosophically they're in agreement with this "NL/small ball/Ozzie ball" label. And as much as we've been a team of sluggers since USCF opened, it has always been the pitching that delineated the eventual success of various seasons. One way or the other, you'd just like to see the front office, minor leagues and MLB coaching staff all on the same page. If we are to be a team of bunters/sacrificers/hit to the opposite field types, why isn't this being inculcated into our minor leaguers? When you think back to the likes of Borchard, Rowand, Crede, Josh Fields, Brian Anderson...none of them profile as those type of players. Why aren't they forced to learn those skills as soon as they're drafted, at the minor league level? In the old days, if you couldn't hit 20-30 homers per season, you simply HAD to do the other things well to stay in the big leagues. Omar Vizquel is a perfect example of this, he was a "plus plus" fielder, could steal a base, make contact, he did the "complementary" things we earlier saw with Iguchi in 2005/06. And yet we've had very few of these prospects in our system. Chris Getz comes to mind. Morel, to an extent. Maybe Sweeney. Jerry Owens, although he wasn't "raised" in our system for very long. And yet for each of them, their lack of power/OPS/SLG was often cited as the reason why they weren't good fits for our major league team...being "grindy" is only good for veteran players like Erstad and Kotsay, apparently. Then you look at the minor leaguers like Mitchell, Thompson, Viciedo, Danks, Flowers, etc. They're all "hit or strike out" types, with the possible exception of Viciedo and Mitchell as they mature. It's just very frustrating to watch players like Rios who SHOULD be able to contribute something offensively even if they're struggling and yet they've never learned how...some of the blame lies with the Blue Jays for spoiling/coddling both him and Wells, but it's been so ugly for Rios for much of his time here (yes, minus the first half of 2010...even Beckham has been pretty good 1/2 of the time, not 1/3rd.)

QUOTE (iamshack @ May 31, 2011 -> 12:13 AM) This was basically the ONLY justification I could think of for not pinch hitting for Dunn in the Saturday game with 1 out and a man on third. Instead, we waited til he popped out to second and then pinch hit Quentin for McPherson, and forced Omar Vizquel to play 1st base for the first time in his 700 year career. This is professional f***ing baseball. He has got to realize how much he is absolutely killing us right now. If he can't handle being replaced by someone who actually can hit until he gets his s*** straightened out, then he is a weak-minded loser who needs to go cry to his wife. He is making $14 million dollars a year. Is that not enough to make him understand? Just as Ozzie said the other day that we are in no position to be giving away games right now, that means we have to do what this team needs to win. Now. Not in August when we are 24 games back because Adam Dunn is 0-174 against lefties and he finally figures it out. If he wants to work on his s*** in batting practice and with Greg Walker and gradually starts improving, then he should get inserted into the lineup more and more. But if he is going to be an absolute black hole, I'm sorry, we just can't afford the luxury of catering to his psyche right now. And as for Ortiz, I highly doubt the Red Sox were 7 games under .500 while allowing Ortiz the option to fight through his woes. Which comes back to the whole "respect" issue that's seemingly such an issue with Ozzie. He "respected" Thome too much to make him a part-time player, and that was a LARGE factor in our losing the division last year. He respects Dunn and Rios too much to bench them for Lillibridge (or Viciedo, basically rookies or 2nd year players) because "of the back of his baseball card." In all fairness, not even Rongey would express much confidence or optimism in the White Sox breaking out of it this year...his confidence was reserved for the Indians falling back to the field and struggling more and more, as we're currently seeing them. Unfortunately, we've only picked up 2 1/2 games in the standings against them. Basically, they've remained in that 11-14 games over .500 range or "window" while we've improved from 11 to 6 games under .500. Usually forecasting 2-3 weeks ahead is idiotic with this Sox team, but I said before the West Coast swing that we had to be 6 games under .500 before we faced Detroit at home, then we had to take it to both the Tigers and the Mariners. If we split the next 2 in BOSTON, we'll be exactly at that 6 game under mark....neither out of it enough to make any moves and certainly not close to contending where you would even begin to contemplate adding. And what could this team possibly add? Another starter or someone for the bullpen? Nope. We're not going to bench Pierre, Dunn, AJ, Rios, Beckham or Vizquel, so basically we're stuck with this team, for better or worse.

Rongey's basic point in the post-game was that if you go ahead and bench Dunn against all LH pitching and/or PH for him, that you end up perhaps winning the game but losing the overall war, in the sense that totally crippling Dunn psychologically and not letting him fight through this ongoing slump will end up costing the White Sox 10+ games in the future AND will end up creating a bigger issue with his future perforamance and contract. Dunn, I get. The example he used was the Red Sox not benching Ortiz when he struggled out of the gate so much in 2009 and 2010. But not giving Viciedo some at-bats over Pierre, not so much...we're done with Juan after this season. Of course, Pierre's actually playing "decently" (compared to previous results as one of the bottom 5 MLBers for overall play) and that's making it less and less likely they go to Viciedo. And the fact that there's no back-up or competent leadoff hitter lurking in the line-up. I think Ozzie remembers well enough what happened when he tried to force Swisher into that role and the adverse effect it had upon him.

Is there another AL team that attempts more unsuccessful/poorly executed bunts than we do?

Does anyone have this stat? baseball-reference? Teams that have scored the least amount of runs per opportunity with runners at 1st and 2nd and no outs, and runners from 3rd with less than 2 outs? And bases loaded with less than 2 outs? I would be shocked if we weren't worst in the AL in at least 2 of those 3 categories. Theoretically, the Mariners or Twins might be worse, but I doubt it. They don't get enough baserunners on.