mmmmmbeeer

My issue with Ozzie is not his poor decisions, every manager has those, it's with his strategies and fondness of NL style baseball. A poor decision is leaving MB in to face VMart....I expect a manager to choose incorrectly some times. Sacrificing Juan Pierre to second CONSISTENTLY throughout this season late in games is a strategy, not a spur of the moment decision. Sacrifice bunts, stealing bases with little to no regard for the opposing battery, these are strategies. A rotating DH is a strategy. Sunday lineups are strategy. We aren't in the NL and, until Ozzie gets this through his thick head, I will continue to look at him as a manager who not only is a poor strategic manager but also a buffoon who refuses to admit the faults of his strategies.

QUOTE (Leonard Zelig @ Sep 2, 2010 -> 09:59 AM) Not if he doesn't want to. This is America, the land of the free! Yeah, that is the case. He can skip his conscription but would never be allowed to step foot on Korean soil again....tough decision to abandon your home like that.

QUOTE (Friend of Nordhagen @ Sep 1, 2010 -> 11:58 AM) Here's another thing: the Sox are actually ahead of the league average on getting guys home from 3rd with less than 2 out. The league average is an astoundingly low 53%, which tells you that (1) a lot of teams struggle to bring home those runners; and (2) all things being equal, you have a slightly better than 50% chance to bring home the run that will still leave you 2 runs short, with few outs remaining. Not so hot. Don't forget that we lead the league hitting with RISP....which means it was absolutely imperative to move Pierre from 2B to 3B....errr

I am so glad I picked Jackson in my fantasy league right after Coop said he could fix him. It's paid off verrryyyy nicely.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 31, 2010 -> 11:57 AM) Another thing that was specifically talked about was a change in body position on the mound. I believe that the talk was Jackson was slouching over more while throwing late in last season/early this season, and one of his first tasks was getting him to stand back upwards. Yeah, the ESPN coverage of his first Sox start was referring to how Coop had identified his right leg would kind of collapse or buckle early in his delivery which caused him to regularly miss up and in (to RH hitters) and just generally lose quite a bit of accuracy.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 30, 2010 -> 07:32 AM) How do you know what financial impact it has? Its $4 million that could have been spent on something more useful, perhaps earlier in the season. But that money wasn't used to acquire anyone so, again, it has no present value to the team, from a fan's perspective, outside of acquiring Manny. While interest on $4M would be great if we were investors, we're not. Debating his value to LA is fair game, though I think 2009's contributions in contrast to his 2010 efforts make it clear that he no longer gets along with Torre or someone else in that organization as opposed to him just losing his skills.

From a fan or media perspective, I'm not sure exactly why the fact Manny makes $4M over the remainder of the season is even in the conversation when evaluating the move? This expenditure has no impact on next season's payroll, no impact on acquiring additional help this season, and cost us nothing in terms of talent. The only person that should care about the size of Manny's remaining 30 day contract is Reinsdorf and the other investors. As fans or as media, you can only judge this move based on what Manny does for the White Sox chance of winning this division.....any move that replaces Mark Kotsay with Manny Ramirez has absolutely got to be looked at as an improvement.

The appropriate question here, because of the fact that Kotsay isn't much of an improvement over Jones, is why is Andrew Jones hitting higher in the order than Gordon Beckham?

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Aug 24, 2010 -> 07:19 AM) Sounds like IT work. Long haul backbone so, yeah, pretty close to IT type of service and demands.

I took a "promotion" that awarded me a 17% pay increase and 5% bonus increase and I still made nearly $20K less than I did when I was hourly. The sad thing is that I'm not working that much less now and also get a lovely 2-week stretch of uncompensated oncall every couple of months. Climbing the ole ladder....gotta love it.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 22, 2010 -> 11:17 PM) The downfall/struggles of Quentin and Rios since the ASB are the biggest reasons for this team's failures (besides the obvious bullpen issues). Konerko has been a stready, great contributor all season. However, if you look at the players who are hitting well now, none of them are in a position to really knock in a ton of runs. Pierre, Vizquel, Beckham (and even Kotsay, to some extent) are swinging the bats well. However, Pierre/Omar don't have the power to knock in numerous runners per game, and Beckham in the 9 spot has not allowed him to be a dynamic force despite his .350 or so batting average over the last 35 games. We've said it before, but Rios has really hurt this lineup since the ASB by killing a lot of the momentum when Pierre/Omar get on base. Then you get to Quentin, who cannot seem to do anything productive on the road. It's a recipe for disaster given the lack of power at so many of our positions. The one man who really needs to get more at bats is Castro, as he's been an absolute beast. I don't care if Ozzie despises playing both of his catchers in a game...his bat is the hottest on the squad and when your offense is struggling, you need to do everything you can. It's infuriating that Beckham is STILL hitting out of the 9 hole at this point in the season.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Aug 20, 2010 -> 08:54 PM) f*** Joe West. no doubt....what a joke. I refuse to believe this wasn't intentional given all the evidence.

disregard.

I thought Thornton was starting tonight?

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 18, 2010 -> 08:23 AM) Despite the fact that I jumped off the Ozzie bandwagon, I will actually partially defend Ozzie on the Kotsay thing last night (even though I am going to get ripped for it). Kotsay crushed the ball twice already in that game - and that does mean something. When a guy has two shots like that in a game, its hard to justify pulling him. Yes, I realize Kotsay sucks against lefties this year - in 21 at bats. Yes, Kotsay overall is a bad hitter who should not be starting. I'm just saying, I don't think that decision was as awful as its being made out to be. I think that's a tough call in that situation, and I wouldn't have been pissed at Ozzie either way. But goddamn did that game piss me off overall. That's what their assumption was, too. I don't know....he's in a platoon for a reason. He's expected to hit RHP well and the fact that he actually did for once, imo, doesn't mean he should suddenly be looked upon as something other than a platoon guy. There were several failures in that game but I always get a kick out of the opposing announcers reacting some of OG's moves...like Kotsay and Thornton.

It was quite comical last night listening to Bremer and Blyleven try to make sense of Kotsay hitting in the 5th with the bases loaded against Perkins. They just kept repeating how Kotsay was 0-21 against LHP this season. Must've been some of that gut managing by the ole Ozzerooooo.

I'm still not real clear why Gordon Beckham, he of the OPS around 1.000 since July 1, is still hitting in the 9th spot.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 17, 2010 -> 05:26 PM) The thing is...if there was a SABR manager stat, Ozzie would almost certainly score ridiculously well, because for the last 6 years, his teams have consistently outperformed the preseason projections and the pythagorean projections. I think it would be a situational analysis as opposed to a holistic season analysis. Every other stat is a culmination of small instances over the course of a season, not sure why a manager stat would be any different. For instance, and I'm no SABR guy, but i believe SABR frowns heavily on sac bunts and yet OG is all about a sac bunt. By atleast that single variable, despite a World Series win in 2005, SABR would consider him a poor manager.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Aug 17, 2010 -> 04:20 PM) So Ozzie at worst is a top 10 manager. He's immediately ranked below every American League manager because he quite simply does not comprehend that you do not manage/field an AL club like it's competing in the NL. So that places him 14th right off the bat. But if he were in the the NL he wouldn't be the best NL manager either....I'd place Manuel, Torre, Cox, Black, and Tracy all above him. So yeah, I'd put him about 19th in the league. I wish these SABR guys would come up with a manager stat.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 16, 2010 -> 12:54 PM) It's not "The" major reason. It is definitely "A" major reason. I can give you a list of major reasons...Peavy getting hurt, Peavy sucking at the start of the year, Jenks imploding, Teahen getting hurt, Beckham sophomore slump, Quentin being down, Putz's last 3 games, Floyd's start to the year, AJ Pierzynski's bat, some of Ozzie's lineup decisions... However...big difference...for everything on that list, I can either say "that was unpredictable coming into the season" (Peavy hurting, Teahen hurting, AJ's bat) or "yeah that sucked but it's been balanced out by this" (i.e. Floyd's start balanced out by Floyd's recent dominance or AJ's bat balanced by his handling of the pitching staff) or "Yeah that sucked but you weren't going to do anything about it" (i.e. replacing Beckham and Quentin) Mark Kotsay getting 300 PA's as DH is a singular example here of something that was fully predictable coming in to the season, easily avoidable, and really not balanced out by anything. About the only positive you can say is that Konerko's had a great year and maybe the extra rest is a part of that...but the answer to that was not to keep Kotsay, it was to plan to move Teahen to 1b every now and then to spell him. Add in the fact that amphetamine is now outlawed and tested for.

It's nothing more than a study of probabilities dressed in fancy names. Much like the comprehension of probabilities allows actuaries and gamblers to successfully predict an outcome more often than those unaware of probabilities, they are still surprised when John Doe has a heart attack at age 32 or 3 aces pop up in the flop of a game of Texas HoldEm. I guess my point is that I feel that Sabr has value to the game but not nearly as much as is impressed upon us by its rabid community of followers. Some of the stats are deserving of the praise while others are not even close to ready for mainstream acceptance.

Ron Gardenhire.

I think that we're actually fairly ordinary with our post-break struggles. If you look at the "last 10" in the standings now, there really aren't many teams really dominating with 9-1's, 10-0's, 8-2's. Twins are the only team 8-2, a couple 7-3s, but the rest of both leagues are languishing in mediocrity. They don't call these the dog days for the hell of it. I think the fact that the Twins, almost religiously, perform well above average on an annual basis after the break tends to highlight our mediocrity to us more, as a division foe, than we'd see if we were say Yankee fans. As you pointed out, over the last decade there really is no difference in our performance yet we've had different managers, different players, different coaching staffs....the park has undergone renovations that changed the way it played, weather is obviously not 100% consistent year to year.....Unless you want to blame Hawk or the uniforms, there really isn't anything you can definitively point to as a cause.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 15, 2010 -> 02:13 PM) For a guy that struggles to hit a ball far enough to even get a sac fly. Ain't that the truth..... Oz is just horrible.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 15, 2010 -> 01:45 PM) I think the Twins are in the process of doing that. They're like 16-4 in their last 20. 21-8 since the break