caulfield12

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 16, 2010 -> 08:28 PM) Defense hasn't helped them out, but we couldn't really count on them continuing their historic starting pitching performance. Gavin should have been out of this inning with an easy double play. Viciedo cannot keep playing 3rd base. The problem is that Teahen isn't the answer, either. It's no coincidence we started to take off without him in the infield defensively. That leaves a 43 year old who has a 625 OPS (overachieving) who will probably wear down in the next 2-3 months of Chicago heat. And you can't move Beckham back.

The White Sox have responded throughout this streak to being down and not out. This will be a big test of that theory. At least CLE isn't lying down and dying tonight. Seems like we were playing with fire with Viciedo at 3B and it came back to bite us, Gavin couldn't pitch out if it, but it's not exactly like he was knocked all over the ballpark.

What if Ozzie got hurt, lol? Is he covered by insurance? If he goes crazy like Zambrano and has to attend more classes....? Joking... Greg, I'm not sure why you are giving up on Peavy so quickly. He's a competitor, he's not going to see his baseball (and pitching career) end unless there's simply no way to deal with pain or injury, like what happened with Brad Radke at the end. Yes, it's a rare injury, but who's to say he won't be even better when he comes back and is throwing pain free? And we still don't even know if the White Sox are getting some of that $37.5 million back in insurance settlement payments....maybe.

How many of you guys have seen DUEL, the first Spielberg movie? What a great first movie...so much intensity and drama out of a singular situation.

Would echo the sentiments about INCEPTION. Saw it here in Thailand already, will go for 2nd time tonight to catch up on a few plot points I missed or overlooked on first viewing. One of the main criticisms, perhaps, is that the film doesn't change your life, it doesn't stay with you or linger on....but I prefer to think that's kind of the point, that dreams are the same way, they're ephemeral and don't often stick in your subconscious. People look for deeper philosophical meaning in movies like 2001 or Blade Runner or Brazil or what have you...I really enjoyed it, yes, sometimes Leo DiCaprio feels like he's playing the same role over and over again (after Shutter Island), but this was an excellent film. I'm not even a huge film of the French actress, M. Cotillard or whatever her name is (Mal, which means evil in Spanish) in real life, but she was good in this one. It was nice to see Tom Berenger again, he was something of a big thing in the 80's and kind of disappeared. Obviously Nolan likes to work with Michael Caine and Cillian Murphy...Juno (Ellen Page) added a female touch, and Joseph Gordon Levitt has been one of my favorites since 28 Days of Summer. They even had the Indian scientist from 2012 as part of the team, interesting cast that worked together well. Eames (Tom Hardy) was my favorite character, THE FORGER, he's something of a cross between Daniel Craig, Sean Bean and Jason Statham.

Guillen called for four hit-and-runs — and all of them worked. • The White Sox produced three sacrifice flies in the first two innings. • Gordon Beckham(notes) hit a home run at Target (no easy task) and has been heating up since Guillen almost, but didn't quite, banish him. • Guillen stuck with left-hander John Danks(notes) through a maddening six-run second inning for the Twins, and he got them to the seventh. • Guillen switched relievers at the right moments; Bobby Jenks(notes) struck out Orlando Hudson(notes) with the bases loaded in the eighth and got Jim Thome(notes) looking in the ninth. And so, for the ninth straight game, and for the 26th time in 31 games, the White Sox won. Via the Chicago Tribune: "(This) was a big win because they wanted to come out and send a message. We wanted to keep doing what we're doing," said A.J. Pierzynski(notes), whose RBI double in the fifth gave the Sox the lead for good at 7-6. www.yahoo.com/sports (Duk, Big League Stew)

(Adrian) Gonzalez, 28, saves his words for before and after games. As Black’s clubhouse liaison and peacemaker, he approaches teammates with a certain delicacy – Gonzalez looked sheepish for taking Nick Hundley’s(notes) money in a recent World Cup side bet – and offers little pearls of wisdom, short and sweet enough to end up on Twitter. He spoke to Hundley this spring, his advice almost a haiku: “Let the ball get deeper when you swing. Don’t go and get it. Be calm.” When Gonzalez approached pitcher Wade LeBlanc(notes), he suggested LeBlanc follow another successful control-and-command left-hander: “Look at Mark Buehrle. He never shakes off his catchers because all he has to do is execute the pitch. Execute, and it will work.” yahoo.com/sports (passan)

QUOTE (Stan Bahnsen @ Jul 15, 2010 -> 10:10 PM) I'll bet that the Twins' players who've been around a few years are thinking that the '10 Sox are reminiscent of their own team in '06 - bad in April and May, got it going big-time in interleague, and then never let off the gas. Except that year, the Twins completely dominated the second half.....passing the Sox and the Tigers the final weekend. To me, the main difference is they had two legitimate "aces" in Santana and Liriano. With Peavy down, we have two "2's" (assuming Floyd keeps it up) and a 2/3 in Buehrle.

It would be awesome to take 3/4 in Minnesota, but I would be satisfied with a split. Still, this is really the time to knock them out of contention for the moment, with their starting rotation falling apart and Morneau's concussion status very uncertain after the setback in workouts today. The Tigers get CLE on the road, then come back home and face the Rangers (I think) and then the Blue Jays. Have to double-check.

Jenks and AJ made an interesting decision to go with the change-up against either Young or Kubel. Seems his dominant out pitch is again the slider/cutter...which works a heckuva lot better at 95-97 than 91-94.

Has an MLB team had both 9 and 11 game winning streaks in a single season? 20/21 and 26/31... Slowey, Blackburn and Liriano all are struggling mightily. Blackburn might end up in AAA, with Duensing or Perkins taking his place in the rotation. The big question now is whther the Twins make a move for Oswalt, Haren, Sheets, etc. 17-17 in the ALCD 3-3 versus Minnesota 4-8 versus CLE 7-5 versus KC 3-1 versus DET

18-9 in one run games now, leading the AL 7-12 in two run games 25-21 overall in 1 or 2 run games

Jenks had something like a 1.15 ERA in his last six weeks of appearances going into that AB against Hudson. Nice to have him back, it's almost to the point where you feel almost comfortable again with Jenks in the game....but NO, not really. At least Mauer is leading off the 9th now, and hopefully we can put up at least one more run with the heart of the order up now.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 15, 2010 -> 09:00 PM) Where's that Teahen rumor from? From Farmer apparently, to the Twins' announcers.

QUOTE (southsideirish71 @ Jul 15, 2010 -> 08:57 PM) Hawk " If you weren't around for the 2nd inning, a dropped ball cost the sox 6 runs." And of course if you weren't there for the 2nd inning you may have heard about this at least 30 times since from our announcer. Should Rios have caught that ball?

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 15, 2010 -> 08:56 PM) I'd give Thornton the 8th, and get Santos up in the pen. I'd rather go shopping for breast pumps than see Jenks try to go two innings. At least Carlos Gomez is no longer on the Twins for Hawk to over-praise and to beat the Sox at home. Rumor that Teahen is going to the outfield again so Vizquel/Viciedo can stay at 3B and I suppose Quentin would get a lot of AB's at DH, taking them mostly away from Andruw Jones?

I heard there was some kind of incident with AJ throwing his bat (maybe accidentally, probably not) into the Twins' dugout and then Thome dropped his bat almost right on AJ in the 3rd inning...

Kubel, Cuddyer and Mauer all struggling this season have offset the dominance of Young and Morneau. Not surprisingly, Hudson and Hardy have been hurt and have also struggled as of late...and Punto's just not an everyday player. That and the starting pitching and shaky middle relief has killed the Twins.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 15, 2010 -> 08:49 PM) Bring in Thornton to face Kubel!! Seems like he heard you. Let's hope it goes better than the McCann at-bat.

Putz has 22 consecutive scoreless appearances. That goes back to 2004 I think... Also, the last two years 10/12 teams leading at the break either won their divisions or entered the postseason as the Wild Card. The only exceptions, D-Backs in 2008 and the Tigers last year.

"Brian Anderson would put up Torii Hunter-esque numbers if he played everyday." KW Well, looks like the White Sox were cruising, then Danks had one of his occasional implosions and somehow we pulled ourselves off the deck and got back up again (which is nice to see that we believe is possible in Minnesota). Danks at least shut the door and got the game to our pen, so he definitely did his job after the Mauer bases-clearing double. Nice to see Beckham looking more and more dangerous.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 14, 2010 -> 03:48 PM) I'm sure you could get an insurance company to start insuring contracts where a guy misses half the season. But as I'm sure you can figure...that happens a lot more often than a guy missing an entire season...and so the insurance cost would be much, much higher. On this team? A bat, no question. My recollection is that the White Sox got back $4-4.5 million on David Wells' contract in 2001, and that happened in the middle of the season, where he went down and actually looked like he was headed towards retirement. You'd have to think if you could insure David Wells at that age, you could get insurance for just about anything. Then again, he was pretty resilient despite being fat basically and might have been less of a risk than Peavy, since 90% of the message board has had concerns about his mechanics from Day 1, obviously "professional" insurance companies would have even more insight from experts on the likelihood of Peavy breaking down again.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jul 13, 2010 -> 02:42 PM) And that would still cost Hudson plus one or both of Flowers and Viciedo. How are you going to realistically replace Konerko and Pierzynski when like $85 million is locked up between 13 players already? And beyond that, with Freddy Garcia proving that he's been healthy (thus far) and league average, you can count on him costing in the neighborhood of $5-8 mill next year while he remains the same injury risk he's always been, if not a bigger injury risk with another year on his arm and him getting a year older. Quite honestly, any player the Sox were to acquire at this point would likely come in as a (semi-)rental player, and would be resigned pretty much only if the Sox won the World Series or atleast made a deep run in the postseason. The Sox simply can't afford much else. Putting those eggs in the "deep postseason run" basket before the end of July could very easily be a misstep, and then having to deal them again in the offseason to avoid losing a substantial amount of money would not only leave the team in a terrible PR situation, it would also be a waste of resources as they wouldn't get the same value back as they traded away in July. I still think the biggest trade the Sox could make is for Adam Dunn, but I'm expecting Adam LaRoche (with whom I would be perfectly content), and it's entirely possible and plausible that they don't make a single move. Assuming Quentin maintains productivity and Beckham is indeed turning it around, the Sox have 4 legitimate bats in the order, and have other solid contributors such as Jones, Ramirez, Teahen, and Pierzynski, and to some extent, guys like Kotsay, Pierre, and Vizquel as well. A move would be nice, but I don't believe it's an absolute necessity unless they can get the right price on the right guy. I don't think there's a team out there that would give Garcia more than $5 million. $4 million might be pushing it, agree with everthing else you said. We simply have to get production from Viciedo and Flowers going forward for this whole thing to work. To me, the biggest questions are what to do with Konerko and Danks (of course, they can hold onto for two more one-year contracts and get draft picks eventually, but that doesn't come close to approximating his value or providing suitable, major league ready replacements). I dread watching Teahen playing 3B again, but somehow they're going to have to split DH time with Viciedo, Quentin, Teahen and Flowers in 2011, at least that's my perception. Of course, as we all know with KW, that's very much subject to change on a weekly basis. As you constantly point out, the numbers are tight enough for next year, it's just inconceivable that Konerko and AJ both come back unless the biggest miracle in modern baseball history occurs with the Pierre, Teahen and Linebrink contracts.

3. The Sox should probably add some insurance at the minor league level, and they should do it quickly. If the Sox go the free agent route, Braden Looper is an option, albeit not a very enticing one. But here's a thought: the Sox should go after Pedro Martinez. Martinez is planning on pitching this year, and although the Phillies likely would be front-runners, the Sox could have a shot if they aggressively pursue Martinez in the coming weeks. If Martinez was to sign, he'd need multiple weeks in the minors to get ready, which really would be perfect for the Sox. First, those weeks would allow the Sox to what Hudson can do. If he struggles, Martinez could replace Hudson in the rotation if/when he's ready. Second, if Garcia was to get injured, Torres could cover the starts to bridge the gap between Garcia and Martinez. It's not the most ideal situation, but it's one the Sox could afford to let happen. And third, if Hudson pitches well and Garcia stays healthy, the Sox would have a surplus of pitching. And there's never anything wrong with that. If the Sox trade for a starter, it likely wouldn't be Ted Lilly or any established veteran of Lilly's ilk (and don't even think about Cliff Lee. The Sox are not getting Cliff Lee). Instead, the Sox would basically be looking for Carlos Torres 2.0, an quadruple-A starter who wouldn't cost much to acquire. In other words, it'd be a lateral move. So if the Sox are looking to add another starter, Pedro Martinez may be the best option available.

They did with David Wells in 2001, they got back something like $4.5 million or so, that was my understanding. I don't know how many companies (like Lloyd's of London, etc.) would have been willing to do this for a pitcher with Jake Peavy's injury history... We do know they owe him something like $37.5 million (including buyout for 2013) going forward. This point was brought up earlier this week, Cowley didn't have the answer or wasn't given access to that "insider" information.