caulfield12

QUOTE (flavum @ May 25, 2011 -> 07:05 PM) Nice game for Mitchell, 3-4, double, homer, bb, 3 rbis Noticed that he only has 4 SB and 4 CS. Is he not 100% confident yet with his ankle or he simply hasn't learned basestealing techniques (ala Willie Harris)? Pretty unusual for someone that athletic in A ball not to have at least 8-10 steals at this point in the season.

“Just because you have a low payroll and you’re young doesn’t mean you’re rebuilding. It just means you don’t have the resources and that you’re young.” He’s got an addendum today. “It doesn’t make your success any less real.” Manny Acta http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=AkNe...est_team_052511 Jeff Passan feature article

Harold Baines and Edgar Martinez say

One of the poll options should have been: Alternate Old-mar and Mark Teahen as apprentices-in-training for the position. Maybe if Teahen actually had to mow the grass with a push mower in the summer months, he'd get in better physical condition and not end up on the DL. Of course, if he WAS on the active roster, Ozzie would play him and that would be equally bad. Hence, groundscrew/mowing detail, where at least we get something back in terms of ROI.

QUOTE (elrockinMT @ May 25, 2011 -> 04:31 PM) I agree that our farm system has been raped. We have some at that level and notably Viciedo that might help, but not many. Flowers maybe, but he and Dyan might still be that year away. After that it's thin or works in progress. I guess we have what we have and that's it so go for it all But, saying that we don;t see a lot of the traded away players making it. I would have liked to have seen Gio Gonzalez and Clayton Richard and maybe C Young in Az. stay with the Sox, but aftr that even though traded players are in the bigs they haven't done all that great. And Sweeney's still not showing enough power (hard as that is, he's just not suited for that big stadium) in Oakland to unseat either Willingham, Crisp or DeJesus. Which was the concern all along in Chicago if he wasn't a CFer, which ideally, he's not. He has to put up 15-18 homers, 30+ doubles, 775+ OPS to hold down RF or LF.

QUOTE (elrockinMT @ May 25, 2011 -> 04:31 PM) I agree that our farm system has been raped. We have some at that level and notably Viciedo that might help, but not many. Flowers maybe, but he and Dyan might still be that year away. After that it's thin or works in progress. I guess we have what we have and that's it so go for it all On paper, there are zero problems with the pitching staff, in fact, we have an overabundance with Humber and Santos with the minor blip against the Dodgers looks like he will hold onto the job. I guess you just have to divide the offense into 3 for now. Core producers: Quentin, Ramirez, Konerko Suck but stuck with: Pierre, AJ, Dunn, Rios Young and will stick it out with: Morel, Beckham, Viciedo, Lillibridge (why not?) possibly Flowers and/or Jordan Danks, along with Infante/Omogrosso/Remenowsky to shore up the back end of the pen where Pena SHOULD be contributing something, etc. The obvious problem is you don't trade anyone from the first group, the second group has ZERO value and the 3rd group has a lot more value to the White Sox than any other organization. Which puts us back in the business of dangling starting pitchers for the best possible return.

QUOTE (elrockinMT @ May 25, 2011 -> 04:22 PM) Once again we talk of trading players who are producing for us. I understand the argument is to trade those who might bring in young talent, but then we have young talent-maybe not major league ready-and mesh them with the non-producers and we suck worse then we do now. Trade the non-producers, whoever they may be. I am not buying into the "free up money" stuff either. We might have a player or two (Viciedo for one) ready at the minor league level and you can trade a position player or two and bring him up plus maybe find a relief pitcher to help out. I don't know what the pieces are at this point as the guilty paerties seem to change from game to game, but I don't think Paul Konerko, Carlos Quentin or Buerhle are the problem I'm not going to disagree. Timing the decline of any contributing player is close to impossible. If we all had magic 8 balls, we would have foreseen injuries or non productivity from Jenks and Crede and gotten something good in return a long time before each of them became totally worthless to our organization. Or not traded for Peavy in the first place because of the inherent risk in acquiring someone with that contract who was already injured at the time of the trade. I think it's simply watching the price and then return/s for players like Swisher and Javy that have quite a few of us nervous what will come next. I really wonder if there were any other teams in MLB interested in Juan Pierre, AJ, Alex Rios, Mark Teahen and Adam Dunn at the prices we paid for them. If so, I'd be curious exactly who they are/were.

QUOTE (TheBigHurt @ May 25, 2011 -> 04:08 PM) Because... it's not remotely true? lol. Would you bet your house the White Sox were going to come back and win the AL Central? I think not, even if you were more or a gambler than KW. You win, you have Anna Kournikova's or a Russian heiress' Florida mansion. Lose, and you're homeless. Take that bet? 20-25% odds of making it, well, maybe not "remote" but not close to good either.

QUOTE (TheBigHurt @ May 25, 2011 -> 04:17 PM) I have to think if Dunn continues this slump, you may figure an NL team will still want him. I don't think it's necessarily a coincidence his first year in the AL he isn't at all on pace for a usual Dunn year. Should we take the appendectomy into account? lol. Adrian Gonzalez definitely needed time for adjustment. Well, 2-3 weeks.

QUOTE (JohnCangelosi @ May 25, 2011 -> 04:14 PM) Realistically who thought we'd be able to take 2 of 3 in Texas anyways? Usually we get swept. Toronto doesn't usually bode well for us either- if we can get through this road trip somehow around 4-5 I don't think it's time to throw in the towel just yet. We can always wait till the trade deadline when teams get more desperate to trade away the pieces at that point as well. But as stated there is a lot of baggage with a lot of our guys whether it be contracts or 10 and 5 guys that won't be easy to get rid of at a premium price. It's almost like we're all in...literally. 1-2 out of the way, but I'm pretty sure we have FOUR in Toronto and then 3 in BOSTON. Then the telling series of the year, DET, a team we haven't beaten at all, let alone at home....and the Mariners, who we probably need to sweep if we can avoid getting Pineda or Felix lined up against us. 2-5 puts on the brink of full firesale talk again.

QUOTE (DirtySox @ May 25, 2011 -> 04:11 PM) Since when has Kenny worried about the future? Win now! Because he had Humber and Peavy...joking! There's no way anybody in baseball could have confidently predicted how either one of these two guys would have fared coming into 2011.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 25, 2011 -> 04:08 PM) If we were trading John Danks for more talent, then it made no sense to retain Konerko and others. If we do get rid of Buehrle, either through mid-season trade or not re-signing him, the presence of Konerko does very little for me. They might as well just stick Viciedo out there and let him learn. (Rios, Dunn and Peavy all need to be ditched eventually as well, in that scenario). Because by the time the team is able to contend again, there's just no way Paulie could STILL be putting up the same numbers he's had for 8 months on a very consistent basis. They're going to take a huge PR hit anyway...fans are already hesistant to support this team, so they should just get it over all at one time instead of in "phases."

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 25, 2011 -> 04:05 PM) It's not and likely won't be again this year. Why, there's been no deterioration in his stuff. He's simply been a hard luck pitcher almost his entire career with the White Sox. I remember not so long ago quite a significant number of posters feeling we should sign Danks for anywhere from $75-100 million for 5 years, etc. Top 3-5 young lefties in the game after Sabathia and Lester, etc. You're telling me MLB GM's won't give up much now simply because he's pitching for one of the worst offenses in the majors in terms of run support when he pitches? I'm not buying that at all.

QUOTE (greg775 @ May 25, 2011 -> 03:57 PM) According to many on this site, nobody will take Rios, Dunn, AJ, Peavy, Mark off our hands so we can't go young. Buehrle, Danks and Jackson can all easily be traded. Peavy, contending teams will wait on, but there will be some bites around the trade deadline if he keeps pitching in the mid 90's and no DL stint. Quentin and Ramirez would of course be easy to trade, but that would be incredibly counter-productive unless you're hitting your mark on every move. Dunn and Rios, no way either is going anywhere this yet. AJ, we're stuck with him forever too.

They still have to play at TOR and BOSTON. 2-5 is not going to do it. Hopefully they can win at least 3. Cleveland's back end of their rotation (Talbot got absolutely hammered today), injuries and the schedule turning against them will bring the Sox back into this, whether we like it or not...with Sox baseball this decade, it's pretty inevitable we get teased at some point (like this recent 12-5 stretch)...enough to not quite give up yet.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 25, 2011 -> 03:49 PM) No, Rios popped the ball up but Kinsler dropped it. Vizquel had gone back to 1b expecting the ball to be caught and was forced out at 2b, so we had Quentin at 3b and Rios at 1b with 2 outs. And of course if that had happened with 2 outs Rios would have been at least not the goat because the score would be 2-2...not that it was a great swing, Kinsler played it into a near-error.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 25, 2011 -> 03:48 PM) What did AJ do? This game is on Ozzie and our bust of a CF. All the usual conspirators this season. Beckham with the fielding error, Dunn and Pierre again, Alexei being impatient and swinging at the first pitch, Rios and AJ giving us absolutely nothing. This season's starting to feel like 2009 all over again. The White Sox will probably get back into the race, not enough to blow things up and not close enough to make a real run or add, either. Frustrating, to say the least.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/odds/ Tigers still the slight favorite over the Indians, by about 4%, 42-38%. Expected win totals around 83-84-85. White Sox odds at the playoffs (division or wild card) are still hovering around 25%.

QUOTE (chisoxt @ May 25, 2011 -> 04:35 AM) Regarding CF, I wonder how things would have worked out had Torri Hunter signed that contract with us. A lot of Twins fans have the idea that he was the KEY leader (along with Santana) who lit the fuse, so to speak, for that team. That Mauer/Morneau simply are more or less like Thome/Konerko and not "in your face" clubhouse personalities. I'd like to think we'd have at least one more AL Central title, but I'm not so sure about it. His signing, for that money and with a loss of at least 2-3 steps of footspeed defensively, wasn't the best for the Angels, either. Better than Rios, or Vernon Wells, of course, but not a clear plus, all things considered. And then we would have ended up giving the Twins the draft picks, so maybe not the wisest move in the world.

Except that Melido Perez game was only six innings pitched, right? I know it wasn't a CG.

QUOTE (iamshack @ May 24, 2011 -> 05:00 PM) Honestly, if this is what you guys all believe, what does that say about you when you are devoting this much of your life to a team you feel this way about? I thought i was being facetious or fictitious, as Yogi Berra would put it. IF IF IF we can make it to the playoffs, with our rotation, we'd have just as good a chance as any team to win it. We don't need the homefield advantage because we're better on the road, anyway. Unfortunately, more often than not, we're making the argument we could win the World Series with our talent yet we often can't even get out of our own division.

QUOTE (iamshack @ May 24, 2011 -> 04:47 PM) So what if this team were to win the division? What would your opinion be then? LOL. 1) That the Indians "choked" or collapsed 2) That the Indians were just another version of the 2003 Royals 3) That we were lucky the Twins are/were the worst team in the majors and that we didn't have to beat them head-to-head for the division title 4) That 85-88 wins wouldn't have been enough to win any other division in baseball 5) All-In still didn't work to draw in additional crowd support in April/May...thus depriving of us of additional revenue streams to add that "one, final piece" to put us over the top and make us a legit World Series contender 6) Even the kid from LITTLE BIG LEAGUE would win the AL Central occasionally having $128 million to spend on his roster

I'm going to make an educated guess that the author of that ESPN/Chicago article has never once in his life seen Dayan Viciedo swing a baseball bat. Is Viciedo going to have the same impact as Dunn on the back of his baseball card? Obviously doubtful, but just to discount the possible contributions of a minor leaguer that you've probably never seen...well, it just goes to show you that anyone can have an opinion these days.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 24, 2011 -> 04:22 PM) Yes seriously. I know you've tried to argue that KW got all he could back for Swisher (which I disagree with), but I'll never understand what the rush was to trade Javy so early in the offseason. Personally, I think KW got infatuated with Tyler Flowers during Arizona Fall League, and pulled the trigger way too fast. We got ourselves in a position where we had to part ways with Cabrera (that was logical, although KW almost got stuck with him in their prideful "chicken game" and blocking Alexei Ramirez from SS in the process), Javy and Swisher. Agree with Balta that getting rid of that contract was a no-brainer, but we were really sold a false bill of goods on Tyler Flowers being the catcher of the future and franchise-type player. What it has resulted in is the worst percentage of opposing baserunners thrown out in recent baseball history, and AJ Pierzynski on the books for 2012 for $6 million (or you can "spin" it as $4 million, whatever). So Flowers and Viciedo both might have to be moved (or have no impact) on the positions where we had the most need to LF/RF/DH/1B positions where their projected offensive numbers are much less meaningful. And how many busted catching prospects can we go through in 20-30 years without getting a couple right? I guess some will throw out Miguel Olivo, but the A's did 90% of the development there. He was just one of those talented but misunderstood players that KW stuck his neck out on and it actually worked out well in the end. But we still have no future catcher (I'll hold off on Phegley until he has at least 2 fully healthy seasons) or leadoff hitter in sight internally. When/if Morel and Beckham actually prove to be above average major leaguers on a consistent basis, I'd be more than happy to give KW some credit for that.

It also would have been nice to have someone like Andruw Jones to use occasionally against LHP as well. Not that we would be in 1st place with him.