lostfan

QUOTE (Jenksy Cat @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 07:28 PM) I was pointing out the stupidity of having a heart attack over ever flaw and loss Oh. Well in that case I agree. But if we can't talk about negatives as well as positives, what's the point of coming to a message board?

On the bright side, Verlander will not last past this inning, and the Tigers bullpen is still horrible.

QUOTE (Jenksy Cat @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 06:45 PM) So if we started posting after every win that "This team will win the world series 100%" there wouldn't be any argument then right? The legit response is that despite hitting into 10000000 dp's, we're still in first place and are tops in other offensive categories. Honestly, did anyone expect this team to NOT hit into a million dp's? Is this somehow surprising? I have no problem with complaining, but the b****ing about things that should have been obvious before the season even started and b****ing that this.team.is.dead after every damn loss is getting stupid. I feel most people are complaining due to fear of not winning this division. That way, if we do manage to blow it, you can say "see I knew all along this team blew ass." Enjoy your team being in first place for the majority of the season or just stop watching since it appears to be too stressful for most people. I don't get what your argument is supposed to be here. What are you telling me? It looks like you're trying to give me more counterpoints but they're not going against anything I said.

Ugh. Are both of those unearned runs? Alexei didn't really have to go for the highlight reel throw there.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 07:04 PM) I still say the rebuilt swing from Anderson looks mighty fine, although I'm not a hitting coach. He just hasn't had the playing time to really get it working. Anderson vs. lefties: .189, .491 SLG Quentin vs. lefties: .200, .484 SLG Quentin draws walks better therefore his OPS vs. lefties is 100 points higher. The point I'm getting at here is that Anderson also hits RHP pretty well and had splits similar to Quentin's before he hit his cold streak - since then, he's only been batting against LHP and hasn't been able to rectify it. I'm not trying to draw any conclusion that Anderson will be the offensive player Quentin is for the record, I'm pointing out that they have similar holes in their plate approach.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 07:03 PM) Good discussion. Now hopefully Walker can make the right adjustment to Fields or Anderson (both would be fantastic). This will sound like heresy, but Quentin needs some work too. Not NEARLY as much obviously, but you can see in his average vs. lefties.

That was a nice DP there.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 07:00 PM) Hopefully Danks didn't lose focus while Verlander was out there throwing all those pitches. Danks is not one to lose focus. If he's off, he will suck for the whole game and get pulled early. He's on tonight.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 06:59 PM) Except in the instance of very talented, toolsy players as they typically have the pure athletism to get away with certain flaws, imo. That's what I'm saying in a nutshell.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 06:54 PM) I'm assuming you are going to say that Fields K rate was what would show his mechanical flaw in his stats? I don't know if that is necessarily the case though cause you could make the case that he's just a pure power prospect whose k rate should fall as he continues to learn the strike zone. Again, its just a hypothetical. What about Jeremy Reed? You could make a case that he was the anti-Anderson. He freaking raked and raked and raked. Statistically I don't think you could see many weaknesses and his swing was pretty as can be. He had some untimely injuries which seemed to prevent him from getting hot and those injuries also caused him to make improper adjustments to his swing. Jeff Abbot is another guy who comes to mind. Tremendous swing throughout the minors, came to the majors and made a stupid ass adjustment and never figured things out again. I know Hawk always raves about Jeff Abbot, but I remember talking to a scout who said he thought Abbott was a sure thing (when it came to a guy who would flat out hit). I mean that Anderson was an anomaly. I would have to say that normally, when you have a swing as flawed as Anderson's was, it will be exposed by the time you get to AAA, where there are some good pitchers who just haven't made the majors yet. But there was no real evidence of any problems and Anderson raked all the way until his call-up.

QUOTE (tommy @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 06:49 PM) There's only few of us, as I don't buy into all that Cowley hate. I don't particularly like OC as a person, but I would have him on my team in a heartbeat. He really has grown on me.

Justin Verlander is Jermaine Dye's b****.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 06:46 PM) See my post on BA. Its just really hard to make a significant change to a guys swing because you don't think it will work against major league pitching. Especially when all that guy does is produce throughout his progression to the majors (ie, his minor league production). I'd say at most the Sox instructors were helping BA with minor things because they knew no matter what they might have felt that you can't make a relatively major adjustment without legitimate reasoning (why the f*** would Brian listen or anyone else thats a constant pro). HEck there are many hitters who have flaws in there swing but there athletic ability helps them get away with that (hell, very few hitters truly have what would be described as a fundementally perfect swing). In fairness, I think Anderson is the exception and not the norm. I can't think of anybody else off the top of my head that had a mechanical problem that was hidden all the way to the majors, and got away with it since it didn't show in their stats.

QUOTE (southsideirish71 @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 06:39 PM) Listening to these two boobs from Motown radio is enough to make me puke. Oh and Fields is good at defense according to the Mensa members on the radio. Like I had said earlier in the thread they said Fields was a good fastball hitter and it was a good idea to throw him curveballs. That's about as bad as when Joe Morgan said this was a good breaking ball hitting team (Fields and Crede are probably the only ones).

Watching the 1.2M feed I'm like 30 seconds behind.

QUOTE (southsideirish71 @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 07:33 PM) Good to see that our minor league instruction allows these large flaws in the swing to get through without any change. Yeah... Brian Anderson says hi, Jerry Owens as well, since he admitted nobody ever taught him how to get a bunt down in the minors.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 07:32 PM) Remember what Jeff Pentland did to Sammy Sosa. Gave him HGH?

Tigers announcers: "That's the scouting report on Fields, good fastball hitter, so Verlander starts him out on a nice bender." Yeah, keep doing that Verlander!

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 03:23 AM) It's not hypersensitive. It's simply pointing out how how silly the complaint is and the failure to put the stat into any kind of perspective or context. Do you know who would love to ground into an ass-ton of double plays as long as the team was still #4 in the league in scoring runs?? 10 of the 14 teams in the AL. So a more sensible post than, "Nightmare!!! We ground into a lot of double plays!!!!", would be, "Despite grounding into a relatively high number of double plays, the offense is extremely good, ranking 4th in the AL in runs scored. Why did I bother posting this." Legitimate complaints for baseball fans to make: "We've only scored 395 runs this season." - Seattletalk "Our team OPS is .699."- KCRoyals Fan Gang "We've only hit 69 home runs this season, and this hot streak can't continue." - Twins Brigade "Out of a desperate need to complain about stuff no matter what, Soxtalk poster brings up GIDP stat while failing to put it into the broader context of the success of the offense this season." - Soxtalk If that's what was being said in response, then fine. But it isn't. See post #2 and post #9 in this thread for some typical responses (I'm not meaning to call out the posters, so I'm not quoting them). "We won." or "We're in first place, why are you finding things to complain about?" or some variation thereof. That's a really, really weak response to somebody pointing out a potential flaw. If someone brings up a legit reason that the flaw is a non-issue, they should say so instead of just going with the lazy responses. By the way, "hypersensitive" was aimed at the posters who jump all over a player for striking out twice in a game or giving up a run in a relief appearance.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 11:40 PM) Sure hope so. That can happen sometimes. Did the fans really boo the Tigers off the field? That is huge. Was it after their final out or after JD homered and the half inning ended. Huge win. It sure would be nice to win Saturday and assure us of a series victory. It's just one game, White Sox. We got two more in Det and four in Minnie. One at a time. Let's win. Yes, it wasn't the first time, and it won't be the last time. They hate Todd Jones and deservedly so.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Jul 26, 2008 -> 01:09 AM) I was actually going to say something along the same lines, but more like "He knew SOMEONE would take it out and make it public". Probably.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 11:28 PM) OM god. I went to eat and then went running and came back and saw we won! When I left, it looked like Gavin was gonna get raked for 10 plus runs. Dye ... my god he and Quentin have been amazing this season. Jenks gets 'em 1, 2, 3. Very nice. Once again we win a game that started out s***ty. Excellent!! How did Josh look? Go Sox!! It was great to see him quickly rounding 3rd to score on a shallow single to right. I'm so used to our plodders pulling up at 3rd and then having the inning end.

QUOTE (Cubano @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 10:25 PM) Then, you'll have the big leagues with US players from AAA, AA and A ball. One thing that I do not like about the majors is that contracts or name recognition often keep players in the minors that are better than the ones in the big show. Is that a roundabout way of saying the level of US baseball would not drop off?

QUOTE (kane0730 @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 02:49 PM) Makes the line-up better against LHP. I was about to say that... Crede has been pathetic (.110, .342 OPS) against LHP this year.

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Jul 25, 2008 -> 03:23 PM) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/c...icle4392846.ece