caulfield12

Danks has a .345 BAA after 45 pitches this season. No signs of problems YET.

We've heard bulging and herniated disk. Thome had one of the most violent swings in baseball history and managed it with treatment. There have been just as many who couldn't, like Joe Crede. If they start talking about invasive surgery, then you could start wondering about his career...rather than just physical rehabilitation/therapy/strengthening exercises/stretching/massage, etc.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 19, 2012 -> 07:04 PM) Chris Young. He's mourning the 2006 Young for Vazquez trade. Hey, I have an already-registered copyright on that complaint. Or Phil Rogers.

QUOTE (greg775 @ May 19, 2012 -> 07:00 PM) It seems to me Young is the type of player you'd hope Rios would be. Young is a stud. Delmon Young or Michael Young? Greg, you're drinking too much of Harrelson's kool-aid from the first time he faced us when he was with Tampa.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ May 19, 2012 -> 06:58 PM) I hope every home run the Sox hit at Wrigley lands in that damn basket. Dissappointed with A.J.'s Even Viciedo's, lol?

Trade him now, haha. 4 homers in his last 6 games. 11 hits in his last 21 at-bats. All the way up to .254 and a 720 OPS.

Orlando Hudson To Sign With White Sox By Zach Links [May 19 at 4:32pm CST] Free agent Orlando Hudson claims that he is set to sign with the White Sox, according to Peter Gammons of MLB.com (via Twitter). The second baseman was released by the Padres on Thursday afternoon. The veteran was hitting just .211/.260/.317 in 35 games for San Diego this year and wasn't terribly helpful in grooming the club's young talent. Hudson will earn $5.5MM this year as well as the $2MM buyout he is owed for the 2013 season. There's a rebuilding team eating more than $6 million...albeit they were going to lose the $2 million regardless. So that's perfect, KW is signing a veteran player (see AJ as another example, although the threat/rivalry with Flowers has cooled) who may or may not be the most helpful in working with younger players (see Morel/Lillibridge/possibly Saladino) in a rebuilding effort. Win now, baby! Forget about all the rebuilding/development talk. This organization is so bi-polar. Seems like we're doomed to win between 75-83 games every season until we're all in the grave. In the end, it's not a bad move for THIS SEASON if Hudson can re-energize himself and spark some life into the team...if it's not there, easy to part ways with him.

Greg's entertaining today and the game hasn't even started.

Prediction, two weeks from now, it will be back to "Molina sucks! KW must go!" because criticizing Viciedo will 1) get boring, and 2) what's the point whether he's more like Beltre, Vladdy, Carlos Lee, Bobby Bonilla, Juan Uribe, Magglio Ordonez, Rey Ordonez...he's young and under our control, and relatively cheaply, through 2018, all the prime years for a young hitter will be encompassed. Whereas the A's are spending over 4X as much for a player in Cespedes that will be gone to another team for even more money in 4 years when he's at the very top of his game and has figured out how to adjust to MLB pitching, theoretically. At least we set up our contract with Viciedo in a manner in which if he performs as expected, we don't lose him right at the most critical juncture for the rebuilding effort.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/opinion/...tml?_r=1&hp

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/opinion/...tml?_r=1&hp

http://www.suntimes.com/sports/12583507-41...guillen-is.html Except from new Rick Morrissey book on Ozzie Guillen...

Yeah, thankfully for Rios, Reed held onto the lead. I can't remember what year it was, maybe 2002, that Graffanino made a pretty big error that led to a Cubs' victory, I think at 3B. Or maybe I'm getting confused with the White Sox/Red Sox 2005 error that opened the floodgates. But I could have sworn Tony made a bigger error than Rios' would have been considered had Reed given up a hit to the other Reed (Johnson). Back then, those Cubs/White Sox games were beyond huge. It was like life and death. I suppose Rios should be punished by hitting 1000 fly balls out to him directly in the sun and making sure he catches every one of them. Just a fluke thing, like the wind at Wrigley or especially Candlestick Park.

First Indians one-run loss all season long. They had won their prior 9 one-run games. That has to even out, just like their string of miracle comebacks and home wins did last year in the second half. White Sox are on a current stretch of 51-22 in interleague games, best record in the majors during that timeframe. Marlins are the most successful NL franchise in interleague play. Indians had a walk-up of over 6,100 last night, the 7th highest total in Progressive Field history.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ May 18, 2012 -> 09:08 PM) My desire to have Kenny Williams replaced is based largely on 1 post-season win in last 6 years. So would you also fire Ron Gardenhire for the reason they've only won one post-season series in a decade despite appearing 6 times and have gotten completely blitzed by the Yankees the last couple of times? And because they're arguably the worst team in baseball right now, playing in a two-year old stadium. (Here's where Marty has an out, he can say he would have fired the GM who made four incredibly bad trades, Bill Smith, which is actually what transpired...and that the field manager has very little to do with the results of the team and that JR should have emulated the Pohlads and axed KW).

QUOTE (Marty34 @ May 18, 2012 -> 08:39 PM) Not young enough to make up for the descrepancy in numbers. And if it came out that Rick Hahn was 90% of the driving force behind this signing, would you still be going on and on about Viciedo like this? It's almost like you are unhappy he's been playing well recently since it doesn't support your hypothesis. Maybe it's time to go back to the "If Molina doesn't crack the starting rotation in 2013, KW must be fired!" strategy. Because if you were GM, Santos would have netted you, wala.....a young Pujols, Cabrera and Fielder in the same trade. And Quentin would have brought back a Kemp or Josh Hamilton, surely.

Molina got rocked again. 6 runs this time. Mitchell with two walks so far.

QUOTE (Jose Paniagua @ May 18, 2012 -> 11:01 AM) Yeah, but Alexei was barely pursued by anyone. If I'm not mistaken, there were multiple bidders for Viciedo, but we didn't really have to pay tons for him. So someone on the other MLB teams saw a problem with him, hence the holding back of offers....and I envision us being the ones who overpaid to make it happen. An earlier, cheaper Cespedes situation. It was also the biggest signing bonus/salary ever given in baseball history to Latin American position prospect under the age of 20 or even 25...and I'm pretty sure it still is 3 1/2 years later. Cespedes was already in the prime of his career and had a ton of international playing experience and scouting exposure. The Soler contract will eclipse the Viciedo one, largely because of the unique market situation at this particular moment with the bonus pools, his five tool talent and the fact that he's the last impact player available to every team before the new rules take affect. But he's a matter of weeks away from missing that deadline and losing quite a bit of money.

34,937 Lowest attendance all-time of the series at Wrigley.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-leag...-210332365.html The best bobblehead ever!

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/player--umpir...oesn-t-act.html Passan on relations between umpires and players fraying...

John Carter was 5-10X worse. Same lead actor. Battleship was fine for what it was....super loud, little character development, completely unrealistic or plausible, Michael Bay knockoff or "lite" but good summer popcorn movie fun. Rihanna was actually pretty good, in her supporting role.

QUOTE (2nd_city_saint787 @ May 17, 2012 -> 11:58 PM) http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/batting/_/position/lf/sort/OPS http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/batting/_/position/3b/sort/OPS s 12 3b above .725/ 10 LF above .725 but you look to be right as theres more 3B over .800....me thinking .725 was low confused me lol i play a lot of fantasy baseball so I dont really know squat about anything outside of BA HR RBIs and RUNs and I admit that. You have to consider that only 17/30 teams have qualifying 3B. So that also tells you the average for 3B would be a bit lower because the assumption is a lot of those plate appearances (for non-qualifiers) are ending up between 500-700 OPS (see Brent Morel, even lower) but they're not hitting well enough to play everyday, so they're showing up in the combined/aggregate stats for the position.

QUOTE (2nd_city_saint787 @ May 17, 2012 -> 09:13 PM) This doesnt make sense to me, why would he have less value in LF if the average LF has a .724 OPS whereas Im sure the average 3B has a higher one....It should be the other way around. I with you on that I was just pointing out that when you rank over 2000 minor leaguers 30's is a pretty good ranking. I could be wrong, but I would guess the average 3B OPS HAS to be lower than 724. I'm guessing 675-710.

Not to mention that Viciedo hurt his wrist in the middle of the year, wasn't able to show what he could when he was the hottest hitter in minor league baseball for six weeks (see Pierre, Juan and Rios, Alex blocking him) and the fact that we didn't see a healthy Dayan in very limited late season at-bats is being held against him now (never received regular playing time under a stubborn Guillen, except for maybe 2-3 weeks in 2010). Everyone expects or has come to expect slow starts out of Viciedo and Ramirez...whatever the reason, it always seems to happen with both of them since 2008/09.