caulfield12

QUOTE (Lillian @ May 30, 2011 -> 04:16 AM) Dunn has been very bad vs. left handed pitching for the last several years. That wasn't always the case, and in fact, he had a few years earlier in his career when he actually hit lefties really well. Scouts must have found a big hole in his swing vs southpaws, and the book on him is probably pretty well established by now. Dunn's value to this team is to provide a left handed presence in a very heavily weighted right handed line up. Versus left handed pitching, that function is not relevant, and he isn't good enough to be in there, when he serves no other purpose. What exactly is he supposed to be bringing to the game? Is it his blinding speed? Or perhaps his great defense, which if he had it, wouldn't be relevant as a DH. The point is he serves no purpose vs. left handed pitching. Any other player on the bench would be a better choice. Lillibridge is the best current option. He's very good vs. lefties, and when he plays his speed and defense add a lot to the team. He could play right, and let Carlos D.H. versus lefties. Or, he could play left, and let Pierre DH, although, many of us have our doubts about the merits of J. P. being on the field, in the first place. Brent has certainly earned the playing time, and he would be a far better option than Dunn vs lefties. And of course, an even more obvious solution here is to bring up Viciedo and platoon him with Dunn. In order to get the youngster more playing time, he could spell Pierre a couple of games a week vs. right handers, and maybe even give Carlos a day a week off in RF. Why is none of this apparent to management? In fact, why wan't this the plan from the beginning? Because you don't pay a guy at age 31 $16 million per year over four years to be a platoon player. Just like Ozzie won't take away Dunn's ab's and give them to Lillibridge or Viciedo. He almost always lets veteran players work out of slumps unless they're injured. Nick Swisher is one of the only benchings of a high-salaried player (for a longer than 3-5 game span) that I can remember in the last decade.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 30, 2011 -> 06:26 AM) This isn't luck when it happens year after year. Its a credit to the training staff and to the coaches running things. So you blame Nardi Contreras for the slew of pitching injuries from 2000-2001? Wright Barcelo Stumm Rauch Biddle Wunsch Howry Jim Parque James Baldwin Mike Sirotka

Why exactly does Hahn deserve a chance? Because he's supposedly more from the sabremetrics/statistical field of analysis? I remember a lot of people wanted Dan Evans to become the GM of the Sox and that obviously wasn't meant to be, KW actually got us to the World Series. HOWEVER, there's very little that makes me have confidence he'd be a good GM, other than being a "loyal footsoldier" to JR and KW...and working behind the scenes, negotiating contracts, dealing with ancillary issues that KW doesn't particularly enjoy. About the only thing that would be more annoying than Hahn as GM is either Cora or Buddy Bell. Everyone else, why not, at this point? I'd almost rather we named the Vice President of the Dominican Republic as our GM. At least that way, there'd be some hope for getting future prospects out of the Dominican. I jest. But seriously...how long do we have to wait to see a quality MLB-contributing player from either there or Venezuela? 5 years? 10? I'd just like to see what are some of the reasons that others feel he'd be a good GM? Because of signing Alexei Ramirez to his contract extension? Aren't Hahn and Bell also partially responsible for the Teahen fiasco? Can he also be held accountable for never making any progress in getting Danks to sign an extension or do we put that 100% on KW, the Danks family and his agent?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 30, 2011 -> 06:27 AM) He was never due to sign a huge FA contract this offseason unless he was traded. It probably is making it much more likely that he'll be traded in the near future for a pittance, since his struggles are turning into White Sox losses, and if the White Sox aren't in this race, they're going to be sellers in June. Why would he be traded for a pittance? I think it's the White Sox struggles are largely turning into Danks losses, although 30-40% of the blame resides with him, obviously. At this point, mentally, he must be drained, and there have to be 6-8 contending teams with strong offenses who believe he could be the final piece to get them over the hump. He can't have completely devolved from a pitcher we'd sign for $75-125 million for five years into a pitcher who would be traded for a pittance in the span of just two months. If they do trade Danks and get nothing much in return, it's asinine. When you're paying Pierre, AJ, Teahen, Dunn and Rios the money they're getting and Danks is supposed to be some sort of scapegoat who will purge the Sox malaise once he's gone? In all likelihood, Humber will revert to a AAAA starter and our situation will be completely bleak. If they want to turn this around, they have to elevate his value somehow. It's not going to come from pitching out of the bullpen.

QUOTE (iamshack @ May 29, 2011 -> 08:59 PM) First of all, settle down. Second of all, go call your best buddy naive. I am not naive. I gave credit to the Red Sox, Braves and Phillies. And I don't believe I was mocking anyone. I was merely pointing out that you love everyone else's players but not ours. Matt Joyce? Why does Matt Joyce get a pass but Phil Humber does not? Why is there a double standard with White Sox players? Maybe because you see them all the time? None of those lists are really blowing away the list Kenny can put on his resume. He's built 3/5 of a rotation from nothing. We can only add so many players to the roster, J4L. If we still have these guys under team control and they are above average major league starters we can't very well fit more people on the MLB roster at any given time. Let's face it, outside of the Phillies/Red Sox/Braves, you can't really name any team outside of the Yankees who has had more sustained success than the White Sox over KW's tenure. There have only been 9 organizations that have won a World Series title since KW took over. His organization is amongst them. For all your Dodgers/Angels/Twins/Rangers/Rockies/Braves/Rays talk, not one of those franchises has won anything more than the White Sox have. You love young players. Face it. You'd rather watch the Royals with a bunch of "could be's" any day of the week than our club. And that's fine. But you may want to switch allegiances if that is how you truly feel, because it causes you to be completely blind and impartial. Now I may be a homer, but you're the anti-homer. It still doesn't make KW bad at his job. It makes you a fantasy baseball fan though. Could you honestly say that you would equate success of the 1994-2001 Indians with the 2000-2008 White Sox because despite all those playoff appearances, they didn't win a World Series once? Or the Braves for about 13-14 years, because of only one title? Or the Angels, etc.? (I'm not going to compare us to NYY, BOS and now Philadelphia, although I'm sure many would argue that in our market there's no reason for us NOT to have similar success as the Phillies). Outside of 2008, would you say Ozzie and KW have done a good job in 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2011? And if you realistically look at 2008, it's not that we were anything close to a "great team" that year, we survived to get to the post-season (and Carlos' season-ending injury) 33% due to the Twins' collapse down the stretch, 33% due to a coinflip and 33% due to getting on that mini-roll the final stretch of games where they were all "do or die." Even the Twins' system hits a snag when allocating so much of the payroll to Mauer, Morneau, Pavano, Nathan and Cuddyer results in all of those players underperforming and the lack of fiscal flexibility forcing them to give up their entire bullpen and middle infield. However, as an objective fan, it's hard to argue the Sox have been more successful than us over the last decade. That whole argument is based on one stretch of 9 months of play and the coinflip/Game 163.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_leagu...?urn=mlb-wp8118 Maybe Ozzie and Avril Lavigne can be a part of the Pepsi Summer Concert Series together? I have a feeling by the end of this season, Ozzie will be 1) be fired/resign, 2) have his own t.v. show on some network, 3) be doing a Charlie Sheen-esque tour across the country.

You build chemistry by players trusting each other, progressing forward step by step through the minor league system, learning how to win together, being taught the key organizational learning outcomes so that they don't have to be taught or retrained at the major league level. Why do we have so many "Camp Coras" that seem to be designed only to make us believe the hype that a Josh Fields, Mark Teahen or Dayan Viciedo could be a legit MLB 3B? Why have so many of the bunting practice sessions and early work failed to work with countless Sox players like Brian Anderson or Alexei Ramirez? Why is it that our biggest defensive "progression" (Alexei last year...obviously not followed up in 2011) was credited more to the presence of Omar Vizquel to his right (and not Teahen) rather than anything the coaching staff did? When you just have a collection of talented players without any cohesiveness, a lot of that has to come down on the manager to make them "jell" together as a team, like it or not. Ozzie was successful in the early stages of his managing career, and in 2008, but has largely been a failure the last 3 seasons. Basically, the only reason to still believe in Ozzie is one long anomalous run through the interleague schedule. Rios is a perfect example. One of the most talented players in the game, but only 1/30 organizations was willing to take that contract on, and KW was essentially betting that we were the organization/coaching staff who could pull off the impossible. Maybe NOBODY can "fix" Alex Rios, you have to consider that possibility...still, you can't just bet millions of contract dollars that a change of scenery will result in positive results for more than one month out of the last year years at $12-13 million per season because you as a GM haven't been able to come up with an adequate MLB CFer since 2005. The reason 2005/2006 can't be duplicated or used as a blueprint for success is that turning over 8-10 players (30-40%) of your roster every offseason simply doesn't work unless you have the $75-125 million in extra payroll that the Yankees and Red Sox can allocate to cover those mistakes like Dice-K, Irabu, Lackey, Igawa, Posada, etc.

Gil Meche, more due to injuries and the fact that he wanted to reward the Royals for showing faith in him with that 5 year/$55 million contract coming off an injury/surgery plagued start to his career with SEA. And Meche actually earned his salary and then some, the first couple of years of that deal...giving the Royals a BIT of legitimacy/credibility in terms of going out to market themselves as a destination for free agents in the future.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 29, 2011 -> 06:49 PM) The jury is still out on Humber (I think he's going to fall and he's going to fall hard before the season is over), but for the time being, you have to give him some credit there. But then what about Jackson? What about Pena? These are guys Coop wanted. How come Nick Masset has been so solid with the Reds, yet he couldn't do s*** here? Why was there such a gross miscalculation on Dan Hudson? Why has Danks and Thornton regressed so much? Coop is not as bad as Walker. Not even close. But he's kinda lost that 'magic' he supposedly had 3-4 years ago. I think we're going to have to wait awhile before judging this Hudson deal, simply because we don't know what/if anything we'll get back for him in trade and/or compensation picks. Still, it's not comparable to the Ritchie for K.Wells/Fogg/Lowe deal where we gave up 2 1/2 starters (a long man who could occasionally start in Lowe) and then saw the White Sox suffer for another 2-3 years with the back end of the rotation depth largely because of that one move (and injuries), but it's the same idea, since Hudson was cost-controlled for 6 years and Jackson/Manny Ramirez were "roll the dice/go for broke" moves with inadequate thought to the long-term organizational consequences for making those moves. Luckily for KW, he might have found some help with Humber and a healthy Peavy, but Sale's got to work out for this to make sense for the Sox in the next 2 seasons. I find it hard to believe that Hudson (or Richard) would be putting up #2 or #3 starter numbers with the Yankees, Red Sox, Rays, etc. One thing is for certain, they felt Jackson was a lot more capable than Hudson of getting on a roll at the major league level last year. That's the only logic for making this particular move. And I'm not sure why anyone is suprised when we're 6-22 going back to whenever in TOR, which is basically a victory less than 1 win in 4 games every trip/series up there.

But the Indians are losing and we're still only 9 1/2 GB. I still think it's possible we can get back within 3-4 games, but winning the division? Doubt it. There's really nothing to be excited about with this team, for the moment. In 2007, at least there was Fields/Owens/Wasserman. I guess Peavy's comeback, Santos, Alexei/Quentin/Konerko offensively and Lillibridge for a brief time span. Either take 2/3 from the Red Sox or get swept by Boston and DET at home and call it a season early.

So basically, it's like we re-signed Bobby Jenks, except he's now Edwin Jackson and has morphed into a new and improved (theoretically) version of Joel Zumaya. Since we can't even DFA Pena, there's no way in hell they're putting Jackson in the bullpen. The only time we've done something similar was El Duque in 2005, and I think he was making around $6.5 million that year, but there was actually the experience factor in the playoffs to consider with him, as well as his success against the Red Sox as a Yankee. Something's going go give before it comes to that move, in all likelihood.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 26, 2011 -> 09:34 PM) Seems like Mitchell is finding a groove. 1.045 OPS, 3 HR's and 8 RBI's the last 10 games .323 AVG, still 7 k's in 31 AB's but not a 1K/2AB or 1/3 ratio there, which is an improvement of sorts

QUOTE (fathom @ May 26, 2011 -> 06:01 PM) I wonder which player the Sox will have to spend more money on to trade them, Dunn or Rios? I give it a 1 percent chance that either finishes out their contract with the Sox. I'll guess Rios will end up being impossible to trade and Dunn will have a statistical rebound after the games stop really counting.

AJ at 4/40 throwing out runners. I think that counts the CS against Crisp, so really less than 10%, or 3/40, 7.5%.

TSA or TSC? Hard to keep track of all the Homeland Defense acronyms and agencies we've created these days.

QUOTE (elrockinMT @ May 26, 2011 -> 05:53 PM) I have been doing my best to support the team and it's putrid offesne, but this is getting tiring. Dunn has more K's than anyone in th league if not both leagues. Too bad the guy isn't a pitcher for crying out loud. We need some spark. Where will it come from and when and how Dunn leads the AL with 62 K's, and yet we're the 4th best team in the AL at NOT striking out. A lot of it has to do with AJ and Pierre, but they haven't shown any power.

George Bell I think. Oh, catcher. Has to be former Soxer Borders. I wanted to guess Ernie Whitt but that's definitely wrong. Or Glenallen Hill for worst OF of all time.

Andy Ashby saying that Humber reminds them in terms of his build, delivery and number 41 of former Jays' hurler Pat Hentgen. We have to wish that Phil has anything resembling that type of career with the Sox.

That also marks the first time Viciedo all year has been over a 900 OPS, .905 to be precise. He's more exciting than any hitter on our team except for Quentin and Alexei when he's not foolhardily trying to bunt. Surprised the Jays didn't bring back Frank Catalonotto to have another six hit game against us!

QUOTE (OilCan @ May 26, 2011 -> 06:31 PM) You mean Rice? I might be wrong. Yeah, Rice. I must have been thinking of Lance Broadway or one of those guys. McCulloch? I think he and Danks went to Texas. Maybe one of those pitchers will actually turn out okay, Niemann's been a sort of decent fifth starter except for when he faces the White Sox.

How did Baylor lose any games when they had Aardsma, SS Paul Janish, Humber, Jeff Niemann and the other pitcher who went 8th in the 1st round? Wow...

On a side note, Greg Walker has been telling the opposing broadcasting teams that Dunn has had some of his best BP sessions of the season in Texas. Yay! Glad to see it's really translating against 95 MPH fastballs. One of those swings was half there or a rusty gate at the Haunted Mansion. How do you not just look FB against Morrow? Locked and loaded, not exactly.

Dammit Carlos, you're going to end up with another broken hand bone or radius/ulna at some point doing that. We need you too much.

Cue caught stealing. Maybe teams are deliberately trying to walk Pierre so they can throw him out and demoralize the Sox right away? Cue atrocious bunt, oops. Nice to have a leadoff hitter who can't steal so that we have our 3rd best hitter give up an at-bat against a fastball pitcher who should be a good match-up for Alexei.

5-19 in our last 24 Skydome games. Yay! Although I was reading something like the Twins were 17-45 since some point in September last year.