caulfield12

There's no way this team can lose 90 games. That said, I'll stick with my original prediction of 78-84 wins. The scary thing is that the Mariners and Rays are playing as well as any teams in the majors...whereas the Twins are coasting now after starting out on the West Coast. Yes, it all evens out...I get that, it's early, yadda yadda...but has a White Sox team ever recovered to make the playoffs after being 8 games or more back in a season?

"I'm going to sleep like a baby — wake up every (bleeping) two hours and cry," Guillen said after the Indians scored two runs in the eighth inning to pull out a 3-2 victory and drop the last-place Sox five games behind in the American League Central with their third straight loss. Classic Ozzie.

Basically Ozzie said there's no need for the White Sox to even have a hitting coach. Unless Viciedo, Danks and Flowers are playing regularly at the big league level. That's brilliant Ozzie. I'm sure Mike Gellinger enjoyed your comments as well. So it seems he's acknowledging that at least some of the hitters just aren't listening/preparing or they're just completely tuning out and doing their own things up there with no consequences to their playing time.

TOR, but we get to face Seattle at home this week. That should be interesting. But Tampa Bay will absolutely destroy us. (Which means the White Sox are actually due to win a series, and it will be that one).

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ Apr 17, 2010 -> 08:52 PM) Ozzie just gave an interview that not only deflected blame from Walk, but threw Jayson Nix under the bus. What a lovely human being. "It's not Greg Walker's fault," Guillen said. "(Bleep) it. I'm not going to fire a guy that has nothing to do with this thing. Look at (Mark) Kotsay, (Omar) Vizquel and (Jayson) Nix, they don't need a hitting coach. They need to (bleeping) get hits. "Every time I have a problem with my coaching staff, I'm the first one who fires them. This is like a chain, bro. If they don't hit, they blame the hitting coach and then the manager. If they are not pitching, they blame the pitching coach. It's about blaming people." "I take the blame. I don't want Walk or Coop (pitching coach Don Cooper) or Joey (Joey Cora) to take the blame. All of this thing, blame it on Ozzie. Don't blame Kenny (general manager Ken Williams) or Jerry (chairman Jerry Reinsdorf) or anyone else. Don't put anyone in the middle. When we are not hitting, not pitching or not winning games, my name is out there. That's why I'm the manager. "I'm not afraid to get blamed. I don't give a (bleep) to be blamed." And Later we get this gem: “There’s too much freaking information in baseball now,” Guillen said. “There’s too many (bleeping) guys on the computer. It’s simple. I say that. Pete Rose never watched a computer. Rod Carew never did. All those hitters, they go out and see the ball, hit it and move on.” I'm about ready to cut the cord with Ozzie. http://www.chicagobreakingsports.com/2010/...kers-fault.html Nix didn't deserve that at all, he actually got a hit this week. Like how Ozzie cites how Cabrera was a much better match-up for a RHP than a LHP, and how afraid he was of fat guy MaTola (LaPorta) and Kearns facing Thornton. Really? What's the difference between using a laptop and index cards? Ozzie is/was using Twitter before, he should have some growing intellectual concept about the possibilities of technology applications. It's like that stupid argument all over again in Moneyball, the Fuson School and the DiPodesta/Ricciardi one. YOU HAVE TO USE BOTH...embrace the future. I think Ozzie knows he's "old school" and he sees all these guys like Epstein, Bill James, Daniels and Jack Z. and the writing is on the wall, TO HIM. We wouldn't want to threaten the "good 'ol boys" school of Baines, Walker, Cooper, Cora, Raines, etc., in the dugout, would WE? I mean, it's not like it's EASY for someone without a background in playing (at the very least, minor league professionally) to get into coaching at any level with a major league team. It's next to impossible. Old traditions die hard. I think what would scare Ozzie even more is the kid in "Little Big League" or someone from Ranger's call-in show or one of the Sox message boards managing the team better than he does. Because he's always arguing about how uneducated the fans are about the game and how they have to go to work at 4 a.m. (I guess we're back to the all White Sox fans are blue collar factory laborers in the 1970's) and he's Ozzie so he can say whatever he wants with absolutely no consequences or accountability. Thanks for 2005 and 2008 Ozzie, but that doesn't get you a lifetime pass...not with the paying fans. Maybe with JR.

Still, I think ONE move needs to be made before this thing gets out of hand. Flowers seems like he would need to play everyday...Ozzie's not going to bench Pierre yet or play DeAza over him...or give Nix playing time. Danks isn't ready quite yet...it's like every possibility is a Catch-22 with Ozzie managing this team. But SOMETHING needs to be done to wake this team up. I would settle for giving Danks at-bats over Kotsay, but Ozzie would never do that either. I also don't think Ozzie and KW want to deal with the distraction of AJ's contract status and Flowers getting AB's against LHP quite yet... But letting Flowers play catcher part-time and DH part-time would be the best way to inject some life into this offense internally.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Apr 17, 2010 -> 06:57 PM) Matt LaPorta is now MaTola, hahaha. Ozzie, you should quit this job if you don't even know who's on the other team. Jesus. I'm 98% sure he was thinking of former MLBer Chad Mottola.

No ONEY. Your dad was afraid of Matt Freakin' Thornton having to face Austin Kearns and fat guy...er...LaPorta, whose name he doesn't even remember.

If our offense continues to be this abysmal, we might have a "Puke on the Field To Show Your Displeasure" promotion. Although Roger Bossard would not be in a favor...

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Apr 17, 2010 -> 07:04 PM) The Konerko thing I agree with completely. If he would have walked away after the WS, it would have been a huge PR hit, and even if he is slightly above average to average, what is the probability the Sox could have filled his spot with someone more productive? Doubtful if you ask me. This team is just currently finding ways to lose. They will start winning some games eventually. How many they win is a good question, but I don't think we are looking at a 2007 situation here. Like was stated before, boring baseball and especially losing boring baseball isn't going to work at the box office. I think KW relaxed way too much this offseason. Its time to do something. But those moves are not Hudson (for Garcia), Danks (for Pierre) and Flowers at this point. We have no replacement for Teahen, except Nix or Vizquel, and we know neither of those are good long-term moves because Nix isn't an everyday player. Well, maybe we'll find out...but Ozzie will go down with Omar (as long as he's manager) while Vizquel is still on the roster before he gives Nix an everyday job again. Maybe Hudson for Garcia, but we'll stick with Jones...and, as KW has proven beyond a reasonable doubt, it's close to impossible for him to find a leadoff hitter from outside of the organization. Wise, Owens...Pierre? Swisher? Cabrera? I'm going to keep harping on him not looking at Orlando Hudson coming into 2009 OR 2010. You have to pick between Rios and Beckham for leadoff, neither are ideal. Of course, it's ironic that Chris Young and Pods are playing so well...but they're no longer in our organization. I'm still thinking that losing Juan Uribe was the biggest mistake...even though it received the least amount of attention.

I'll give Ozzie this much, Cabrera (VS RHP 214 and 276 over 3 year) and (VS LHP, 313 and 318 over 3 years) was arguably a better match-up for Peavy than Thornton. However, it would have made a ton of sense to bring in Putz or Santos (two live arms) there instead, and also keep Peavy in a position to get the win. And Ozzie's excuse about not wanting to have Thornton face LaPorta or Kearns (REALLY?) is crap. Thornton is one of the 2-3 best lefty set-up guys in baseball, we don't run in fear from those two guys. It's not like LaPorta is Travis Hafner from 2002-2007. Ridiculous Ozzie.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Apr 17, 2010 -> 05:21 PM) Gene Lamont won 86 games his first year managing the White Sox then had 2 first place finishes. He was canned 31 games into his 4th season with a career winning pct. a lot higher than Ozzie's and replaced with Terry Bevington, perhaps the biggest joke of a manager in MLB history. I guess what I'm saying is, even though I wouldn't do it, its not unprecedented for a guy like Ozzie to get canned fairly early if things don't turn around, even if there really isn't a better alternative around. Its one thing to be 4-8, but with 8 of those games against Cleveland and KC and the others against Toronto, there has to be a little concern. Agreed. Except you're thinking of KC and not the TWINS. We haven't played KC yet. That will only add embarassment when Pods outplays Pierre. At least BA is basically done and Fields and Getz are injured. I'm sure KW would be really annoyed if they beat us with all four of those guys starting for the Royals after we discarded them. You can add Rupe to the list of ex Sox on the Royals

The Konerko move was the right one at the time. Maybe KW went one year too long with Contreras AND Paulie, but nobody was disagreeing at the time, not after all the pride we had when JR welled up and Konerko handed him the baseball. If you want to make any argument, it's not that we built around Konerko. He has always been merely an above average, but not great, 1B. The problem is that the offensive firepower provided by Thome and Dye has been replaced incorrectly and ineffectively. It wasn't necessarily wrong to let them go, it's the moves that KW made that were horrible. Our offense would look a lot nicer with Nick Swisher in the line-up, of course, that ship sailed when the relationship deteriorated with Ozzie and the FO...but losing Swisher and giving up all that talent really was a set-back. That said, Ryan Sweeney, Chris Carter, Chris Getz or even Chris Young the way he's playing now for ARIZ wouldn't make or break this Sox team. But our lack of minor league development has forced moves like Pierre, Rios and Teahen that have hamstrung our payroll to the point where we were basically helpless to sign Matsui, Damon or Vlad. Or O-Dog. BTW, AJ is not doing as expected, he's been pretty close to horrendous. His offensive output was always the most predictable, along with Juan Uribe.

Fathom, that's all you can really do. I don't want to give up on this team, I love baseball too much. The only time I've really ever mentally checked out on a season was 2007. I'm willing to accept this team might not be capable of overtaking Minnesota or Detroit, but there's no excuse at all for us to be inferior to the Indians or Royals. This whole "veterans first" thing will have to go, and there's no way that KW will sit on his hands for a whole season in front of crowds of 12-15-18,000 and not do something. If 2008 proved anything, it was that you could have an instantly credible team going from an atrocious year to the next one, because of Danks/Floyd/Quentin/Ramirez. Beckham's obviously a keeper, too. Whether you call it reloading or rebuilding, we need more CJ Retherford types who bleed baseball and will take the field every single game and give a 100% effort and be upset when they lose. This team just doesn't have to seem any fire or "competitive" moxie like we've had in the past. (The Rowand/Everett/Crede/Uribe Effect). Yes, winning creates chemistry...maybe 2008 created this illusion that we were closer than reality, and now we've simply regressed to mean, where we belonged in the first place.

Southside, I think you and 50% of the season tickets holding on for now agree with you. Which is why I'm going to be very very pissed off the first time KW makes a remark out of frustration about payroll and attendance. He brought this on himself. The surprising thing is that it seemed we were no more than a bat away...when Jones and Rios have actually been decent. (I made this argument somewhere, that simply resigning Thome to go with Jones and then Hudson for 2B/leadoff would have been cheaper, and it might have been the only way to come close to holding the Twins back because they'd be missing two important veterans). But I'm not even sure Thome/Hudson gets it done. MAYBE. But when you have Pierre, Kotsay, Vizquel, Teahen and Ramirez all playing like bench players and AJ never more that a complementary player, you can't trade for Adrian Gonzalez or Lance Berkman or Roy Oswalt, etc. We're just not looking like we're close enough talent-wise to make those "make or break" type of moves we did with Rios and Peavy in 2009.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Apr 17, 2010 -> 05:04 PM) Every 7th inning a lucky fan is randomly selected to pinch hit. The results would be comparable to what we've seen so far from the team. This is similar to the Bill Veeck promotion where the fans in a certain section could be managers for one inning and they were all equipped with FLASH CARDS to show as a democratic consensus (like voting on multiple choice answers on Millionaire for the lifeline) what they wanted to do. 686 OPS now through 12 games. Well, someone has to win when we play the M's. There are no ties in baseball, at least that's what Tom Hanks said in A League of their Own. Or was it there's no crying in baseball? Guess I'll have to watch the 2005 highlights and Field of Dreams again to remember why we subject ourselves to this.

I'm amused that Ranger is close to sounding depressed/despondent. Hard to get really really upset anymore when we've been predicting this for months. You're seeing the apathy already setting in throughout the message boards. The talk in the first week about being buried in the month of April is becoming a frightening possibility.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Apr 17, 2010 -> 05:01 PM) The White Sox won about 12% of the games last season when they scored less than 4 runs. It shouldn't be a surprise they lose when they score 2 runs. Ozzie might have made a mistake keeping Peavy out there too long, I didn't see the game, but you score 2 runs against the Indians again and you should lose. The scary thing is Andruw Jones is actually hitting pretty well and this team is a bat short. Pierre looks done. He seems like he's lost a couple of steps. There is no margin of error for the pitching staff or the defense. One let down and the game is over. NL offenses don't work in the AL. I'm sure that's what the entire team felt yesterday when Teahen made that two run error. They all mentally checked out of the game, which is sad when you're playing a team as bad as the Indians, especially with their recent history of pen troubles.

Quentin hitting into that DP and doing his typical homer in a phone booth pop-up swing didn't help matters very much. We're just not good at driving in RISP except for the mysterious blips of first half 2006 and for most of 2008 as well. Other than that, it has been a pretty brutal stretch of White Sox baseball and there's little light at the end of the tunnel.

With all the examination of Ozzie's leaving Peavy in too long, there's still little to no excuse for our offense. (Just that they're not that good, which is the frustrating part...there's no easy solution to the problem because it's related to a lack of talent/ability/aging roster.) I think that will be lost in the arguments over managing, but our offense just doesn't give the pitching any cushion...with the exception of maybe 2-3 games all season when they actually showed up and looked good.

The big question is can we actually stay close enough to the Twins to make any of this matter? Look at their schedule the next couple of weeks. Meanwhile, we're playing Tampa Bay, Seattle (who will shut down our offense completely and win the close games), we've got a pretty tough schedule the next month. With the exception of the Twins series, this should have been the time to take advantage of playing the Indians, instead we're burying ourselves in a hole right out of the gate.

for the remainder of April 1) Come see Sergio Santos 2) It's Still Early 3) Gordon Beckham...Gordon Beckham. 4) Andruw Jones, he's not as bad as we thought. 5) Alex Rios, he's not as bad as we thought. 6) Come see Peavy, Putz, Konerko, AJ, Jenks and Buehrle before they're traded. 7) Even Ranger Rongey is now questioning Ozzie...which means even YOU, the casual fan, could probably do a better job than Ozzie. 8) We can beat the Indians and possibly the Royals in attendance 9) Only the SOX can make a hero out of Asdrubal Cabrera, who hits .194 against RHP and is a vital cog in the worst offense in baseball, and cause season ticket holders to ditch their tickets after the first homestand. 10) We have the hitting coach with the longest tenure in the AL Central Division.

10,245 were excited enough to come out and watch the White Sox on a Saturday, haha. If we think they're boring, what does everyone else in baseball think? The last team so boring to me was some of those mid to late 80's teams, but then we at least had Ventura/Thomas/McDowell/Sosa/Alvarez/Radinsky, all those young and talented players coming up together

QUOTE (flavum @ Apr 17, 2010 -> 04:29 PM) The thing that sucks the most about that move to leave Peavy in is that it's out of character for Ozzie to do that. He'll usually bend backwards to get the starter a quality start with the lead and get out of there. Just a bad move. I don't know. I think you could make the argument to go with Santos there based on the first week, but Peavy's a former Cy Young winner. Curious decision, but I'm sure Ozzie talked to him and he wanted to go out there to start the inning, he's such a tremendous competitor. At least he proved he could still pitch, that's one positive, although the Indians' offense has sucked except against us.

DAMN YOU, FARMER. I really thought that ball Paulie hit was gone the way he was calling it.