caulfield12

Game, set and match.... We just don't deserve this division...the Tigers just want it more. Probably 3 1/2 games back after tonight now, and MINN threatening to be 7 1/2 games back.

#17: Chicago White Sox (from fangraphs.com) Ownership: B Jerry Reinsdorf has a reputation for being a lot of things, but most of those are leftover from his more aggressive days in the 1990s. Of late, he’s settled into more of a bankroll position, handing the White Sox enough cash to be an upper echelon team in payroll over the last five years. While they built the worst of the new stadiums, it still generates a solid amount of revenue, and the White Sox shouldn’t have too many problems maintaining a high level of payroll for the foreseeable future. Front Office: B- What can you say about Kenny Williams. He gets into public feuds with his manager, former players, media members, scouts… let’s just say he’s a challenge to work with. And, early in his career as a GM, he did some really dumb things. But he’s grown, he’s adapted, and now he’s more like that obsessive fantasy league owner who won’t stop trading until he has a good team again. He stole Carlos Quentin from the D’Backs and John Danks from the Rangers. He built a bullpen out of waiver claims like Bobby Jenks and Matt Thornton. He got bargains with veteran sluggers Jim Thome and Jermaine Dye (the first contract, not the second one). He’s always making moves to try and make the club better, and while he misses some, he’s shown a knack for snagging talent at the right time and putting together consistently good squads. Plus, he’s stayed somewhat sane while dealing with Ozzie Guillen on a daily basis, so he gets a few extra credit points. Major League Talent: C+ Are they contending with an aging core (Thome, Dye, Konerko, Pierzynski, Contreras, Colon, even Buehrle to an extent) or rebuilding with a youth movement (Ramirez, Fields, Quentin, Danks, and Floyd)? Leave it to Kenny Williams to try both simultaneously. There’s some good young players in place, but the teams fortunes are still heavily tied to the aging stars of yesterday. On the positive side, most of those players are still contributors, and the White Sox should have enough firepower to keep up in the AL Central this year, providing they can fix their two gaping holes – center field and second base. With competent major league players in those spots, they’ll be a quality team this year, and the future salary obligations take a huge dive after the year ends, which should allow Williams to surround the young talent with some more productive high paid players. Minor League Talent: C Gordon Beckham’s move to second base gives him a quick path to the major leagues, and the offense is there for him to be an all-star caliber player at the keystone for years to come. Aaron Poreda is actually one of the more underrated arms in the minors, I think – his secondary stuff needs work, but his combination of velocity, sink, and command can get him through while his slider catches up to his fastball. After those two, it gets a little more tricky – Brandon Allen and Dayan Viciedo both offer intriguing power bats, but neither of them are much defensively, so where they fit into a future line-up is in question. Tyler Flowers was a nice pickup in the Javier Vazquez trade, and Jordan Danks and John Shelby provide some position player depth. It’s not a great system, but it’s not nearly as bad as most people think. Overall: C+ Hard to believe that Jerry Reinsdorf is the strength of the organization, but there you go. The team has enough resources to consistently compete for high salaried players, and Kenny Williams has shown an aptitude for picking up enough good, cheap role players to surround his core and make consistent runs at playoff spots. The roster is in transition, but they should be able to avoid a total rebuild and win while reloading. They make some strange moves, but overall, the package mostly works. It could improved upon, but it’s not a bad time to be a White Sox fan. Down to a 35-36% chance to win the ALCD, with DET in the 53-54% range now (www.coolstandings.com)....these last three weeks have put a huge dent in our chances.

2nd time we completely BLEW at the first and second, no outs situation... Beckham had a great chance to score a run but hit into DP and Nix had runners on with 2 outs and FAIL FAIL FAIL I just wonder if this knack for hitting with RISP will ever come to the White Sox this year, like we had in the first 90 games in 2006 and also in 2005, the belief we would/could always come back (especially at home) and that we could beat any team's closer and bullpen as well

yep, after every series this year, we'll say, we went 2-3 but it should have been 4-1 or 3-2 at the worst... or we should have swept... just can't seem to get that big, clutch hit....Rios almost went yard but the wind knocked it down....this against a pitcher with a 6+ ERA on the road we're making look like Joe Cy Mays at least Gavin got Markakis, that guy is hitting 440 against us this season, and, along with Izturis, has really beaten and battered Sox pitching

The thing is, the club last year had that desperation to win, at least at the end of the season? Why is this year's team different? Was it really because of the presence of Griffey? Uribe? Was/is Cabrera more missed than we thought? Vazquez and Swisher weren't ever confused with being leaders....Crede was on the shelf down the stretch. You'd think with Beckham, Nix and Getz, there would be more hunger/desire to win coming from the young players pushing for playing time, compared to a veteran team. This team is perplexing....not to have the ability to come back at all, and not playing well at home for most of the season, whereas the Tigers are 40-20 at home and 24-36 on the road. What happened to Konerko and Dye, BTW? And can Gio Gonzalez ACTUALLY beat Edwin Jackson later tonight?

At least Floyd is on a roll, but this seems like one of those games we lose 2-1 after Gavin gives up another homer... Beckham really struggling now (well, he's human) and Pods and Ramirez are fighting an ongoing battle for worst mental preparation or careless mistakes on a day-to-day basis. Have a feeling the Orioles will come back to score at least one here after the GIDP.

If you're Freidman, would you really take two years of Bobby Jenks at $8 million and $10 million...knowing he's not close to the same pitcher he was from 2005-2006, and swap him for the most identifiable and popular Rays' player over the last five years? Isn't the point with retaining Crawford the high price tag?? How would bringing in a pitcher with a questionable future and ALMOST as high a salary benefit them? I think they would be much more likely to want us to take Burrell off their hands for Jenks. No way, and no way do you trade an everyday LF/CFer with leadoff capabilities for a closer. Never.

QUOTE (GO CHI SOX! @ Aug 19, 2009 -> 11:30 PM) DeWayne Wise of course. GQCQ last year of course.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/beanecount Thought this was interesting...evidence of underachieving, I'm not sure. Of course, if you go by the Pythagorean theory of runs scored versus runs allowed, we're around +14-16 over the entire season....which is exactly where we are now in the standings, 3 games over .500. It does seem that if we come up short, we'll look at this 15 game stretch after the Buehrle no-hitter and say this is where we really needed to go 10-5 and get to ten games over .500 and pass the Tigers in order to survive the following 23 games (21 against tough teams, 17 of them on the road)...of course, DET could always do like Minnesota did last year and come back to us in the end. The way we've been playing 2-1 against BALT seems most likely....you can never expect a sweep with this ballclub. That would put us at 4 games over .500...if we can go 11-12 over the next 23 (I think 10-13 or 9-14 is just as easily possible, but you never know with this team, and mental lift from the addition of Peavy should really help to give us some momentum, too) then we should still be in the thick of it heading into the final 2-3 weeks of the season when we start playing MN and the Tigers in the final week.

The Royals aren't close to giving up on Gordon yet...not by a longshot. Next, I really thought yesterday was a season-changer, but we say that nearly everyday. Our 1 GB morphed quickly to 3 GB in 30 minutes. Seattle made TWO very uncustomary errors (by the SS and then allowing a runner to score from 3B when the runner was picked off at first for the second insurance run...) But looks like (KNOCK ON WOOD) the M's might be able to hold them off today. Kudos to Tigers' fans, I think they have a sellout against the M's tonight again. Lowe and White were very very good against us...but Lowe got rocked...that young rookie catcher hit a bomb (Avila) that sparked things, but the errors killed them. I guess we came back once against Aardsma, so we're even with the Tigers in that category. When you consider that the Tigers are 39-19 at home, it's pretty amazing we're still within hailing distance...and with how well Jackson, Verlander and Porcello have pitched this year. Key inning now, bottom of the 8th...the inning everything fell apart for Sox/M's fans yesterday, 4 runs scored.

Royce had ZERO range by the time he played with us and never dove for the ball...fewer errors are not more than 33% of the picture here. Look at TC comparing Valentin in 2000/2001 compared to what Clayton did during his time in Chicago...not even close.

Valentin >>> Clayton OR Cabrera (2008 version)

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Aug 18, 2009 -> 11:44 AM) The Sox say that they don't mix FA money with minor league money. But KW said 2-3 times that Viciedo's contract was essentially, long-term replacing the sunk costs for Swisher's long-term deal. That's pretty close.

Where would we be right now if KW hadn't scraped Nix and Pods off the scrap heap? If Freddy brings it somehow, that would be three basically 'free' transactions that had a huge impact on this season.

This is like Charles Dickens so far...the Tale of Three Seasons. First season with Owens/Anderson/Lillibridge/Wise/Miller/Fields and multiple pitchers getting PT but a very solid bullpen held things together. -7 games Second seasn when we played really well and got back into the division race with a hot offense and very solid starting pitching...+5 over .500 And now we're basically "treading" water and heading into the most dangerous, elimination stage of the 2009 baseball season. We have 21 really difficult games out of 23, and almost all of them are on the road. If we can somehow go 11-12 or 10-13, we can stay in the division race, unless DET plays equally bad or suffers an injury to Jackson, Porcello or Verlander (although I can't conceive of us passing them before the end of that brutal 23 game stretch). This team has been such a tease, and the comparisons to 2003 are appropriate, although that team got well above .500 (if memory serves me correctly, somewhere in the 12-16 games over vicinity) and played like the best team in the AL, although we did that (too) recently against the Yankees and Angels. We have so many weaknesses and so many strengths on this ballclub...but with the additions of Castro, Pena, Kotsay, Peavy and Rios, we're a significantly better team (on paper) than we were in 2008 and in the first two months of 2009. At the VERY least, the season has become very, very interesting. We have so many players out of position on the infield or learning new positions...a bullpen almost in tatters...one of the worst defenses and fundamentally sound teams in the league, we have virtually no identity besides being the most talented team (now) in the ALCD. Before the last month, you would have had to argue for DET or MIN, but we've surpassed both those clubs IMO. As soon as you count this team out, they surprise. When you think they've turned the corner, they go 5-7 against VERY pedestrian competition when they should be leading the Central (as KW noted). We don't play exceptionally well at home or have many clutch hitters with RISP...are we last in that category, or does it just seem that way? Our execution with runners in scoring position and less than 2 outs...pathetic? The mental lapses of Pods and Ramirez have been noted, and Nix and Beckham have had plenty of struggles (mentally) of their own, ALTHOUGH NOBODY would have imagined either player could/would/should have such a huge impact on the 2009 White Sox season. You just don't ever know with this team....a couple of months ago, DJ and Farmer called 86 and 89 wins to take the division, and it seems like 90 will be an impossible barrier for any team now but the Tigers. I just hope the season does go down to the final week and we continue to have great fan support like the team has enjoyed recently.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 17, 2009 -> 09:26 PM) I'm very confident Thornton was not hurt. Why else would he come out, warm up at the beginning of the 8th...and then be mysteriously pulled before the inning begins? Can you explain that? Obviously, there's no need to even put extra wear and tear on Thornton at this point in the season if you don't want to use him for the 8th...doesn't make any sense, he's CLEARLY the best reliever in the bullpen right now.

Thornton was HURT when he came out to start the 8th.... What else would you have done??? So we really trust our season to Williams over someone we're paying like Linebrink and Dotel...??? This team is in huge trouble anyway with just Thornton in the bullpen....and we might not even have him after tonight.

Buehrle and Danks are pretty decent defenders, especially Mark. Agreed that Rios and Nix (if he's playing 2B full-time and not all over the diamond) are the two best. Konerko is a tick above average, but his level of play has fallen off in recent weeks, offensively as well as defensively. Theoretically, both Ramirez and Quentin might be considered above-average or better by some for SS and LF.

Dotel follows a 96 MPH fastball with the slow stuff to speed up Hairston's bat even more. Pods could have had it, and it certainly would have been an out during a night game, but you never expect HIM to make that play..compared to an above-average MLB OFer. Nix is definitely the goat so far this game...somehow we can never close out "sweep" games. Now we have their closer. Bailey has a killer WHIP. If he pitched for the Yankees or Red Sox, he's ROY.

It's not a horrible play there. Don't want to hit into a DP there. Nix just has to execute, something Crede and Uribe were great at in that situation...we miss both of their clutch bats with a runner on 3rd with less than 2 outs. Well, it looks like we just gave up the lead on the span of 3 pitches...maybe Danksie can get out of it, but losing those two runs out there has totally shifted the momentum in this game. I just don't know if we can survive the brutal stretch over the next month...seventeen very tough road games. If we can stay within 3 of DET after that stretch, we'll still have a chance. We have got to go 4-2 or 5-1 heading into this weekend.

Rios will be fine. All of the "depth/playing time" issues are better than the alternative of having to use Owens, Wasserman, Andy Gonzalez, Adam Russell and Josh Fields. AJ quietly having a great season, although the RBI numbers are down a bit even by his normal 55-60 standards.

We've had this discussion many times before. I think we're something like #8-10 in terms of revenues produced in the majors because of our higher average ticket prices (#4-6 in the majors), parking and concessions revenues. Personally, I believe they could generate MORE revenue by dropping prices and making the tickets more affordable, but the White Sox marketing department seems to believe the market is not as elastic and that it's better to set higher prices than to take the risk of lowering prices and generating even more money...but the possibility of losing money too if the team underperforms like in 2007. The Twin are outdrawing us because they are going into a new ballpark and looked, along with the Indians, to have the best ALCD team...but it's 50% about "positioning" for season tickets in the new ballpark for 2010. You have to give credit to DET for eating the contract of Sheffield and being able to draw 31K+ in such a negative economy in that city (they also have bad contracts on the books with Ordonez, Guillen, Robertson, Willis, Bonderman, etc.). The financial problems have REALLY hit hard in Cleveland and Pittsburgh, but DET has seemed to be immune. Of course, they've been a lot like last year's White Sox team, holding into first place with very strong starting pitching and a dominating home record. Texas has a very exciting team and they're in the bottom 5-10 teams for road attendance as well. San Diego, one of the worst and most boring teams, is #6. As mentioned, when we play the Yankees and Red Sox on the road, that will pull up our averages, too. I am a bit surprised by the strength of Atlanta, Houston and Seattle, but the Mariners really dominate the Pacific Northwest and have a beautiful ballpark and improving team...based on the proximity of the White Sox to first place, you'd think they SHOULD be at #14-15, but we were HORRIBLE at home and looked set to fold/White Flag and we'd just increased ticket prices across the board coming off the playoff appearance.

I wouldn't say, overall, tha Uribe and Crede were THAT dissimilar offensively and defensively. Yes, Joe was more clutch in 05/06, but Uribe put up some very nice stats in 2004...they both struck out a ton and didn't walk much. I'll just leave it that Crede was a bit overratd and Juanie was a bit underrated because of his versatility and steadying presence in the clubhouse. He was the most popular teammate of many in the clubhouse, and Buerhle actually offered to cut JR a check for $1 million of his salary to keep him around (if that would help)...would have been nice, seeing how inept Wilson Betemit was this year after he was misused coming out of ST and never found a groove with the Sox. Both were very good in clutch situations that we're missing out on this year, scoring those runners from 3B with less than two outs on SAC flies.

Don't forget the Viciedo rumors, too...the same rap on him. Carl Everett was a pariah to many and become a beloved teammate on the White Sox (albeit information-age challenged).

Gutierrez has been a steal for the M's. When I saw that trade, I was already scratching my head. And now they've already given up on Ben Francisco, basically. Endy Chavez, when he was healthy, was another player who was perfect for Safeco Field. We have to sacrifice some defense for offense playing 81 home games at USCF...but the acquisition of Rios and the continued improvement from the left side of the infield and Getz/Nix should make us at least an "average" team defensively. I wouldn't mind sacrificing Pods and getting a better defensive player (and no, that's not Randy Winn at this stage in his career) OR a leadoff hitter like Figgins who's a much better bet that Pods going forward. Carl Crawford would be too expensive for only one year IMO. I'm not sure how a line-up with Endy Chavez/Franklin Gutierrez in RF/LF and Rios in CF/RF would end up offensively, but Dye definitely needs to be DHing more (if he's retained) and Pods....well...thanks for 2009 but keeping him around is almost like Joe Crede waiting for the other shoe to drop. I would prefer not to pencil in Pods as the leadoff hitter coming into 2010, thank you very much. Not just because of yesterday...but it's the same risk we took heading into this season with Owens/Anderson/Wise, Lillibridge, Betemit, Fields and Corky Miller having key roles. It has taken at least half the season to fix those mistakes and misjudgements by KW. With that said, I think KW has done a wonderful job of keeping us from bottoming out, losing too much attendance/revenue for this season and really putting us in the driver's seat in the ALCD heading into 2010. I think our season ticket retention rate should be pretty high with Rios and Peavy on board, obviously so if we can make the playoffs again and/or acquire one more name like Figgins in the offseason. Of course, you would have said the Twins and Indians were (coming into 2009) where we LOOK to be heading into 2010....in terms of dominant positioning, and look how well that ended up for those two teams...