VAfan

Ozzie's got to take as much of the blame as Politte here. Where's Brandon McCarthy? Asking Politte to go a second inning was asking for trouble, and Ozzie knew it. The logical move would have been to make a double switch. Bring in McCarthy and have him bat in Uribe's spot. Bring in Ozuna and have him hit 9th to lead off the 10th inning. Ozzie also nearly blew last night's game. Instead of Mack v. Capps and Ozuna v. Marte, we had righty-righty and lefty-lefty with Uribe on 3rd. Had Pods not come through with a hit, we'd have lost that game too.

I'd love to see Cliff phased back into games where he's never facing the tying run at the plate. But, knowing Ozzie, I wouldn't be surprised if Politte were inserted into today's game even if were tight late. Ozzie doesn't coddle players (other than to rest them if they're dinged up). He wants to see what guys are made of right away.

We've also won 3 games more than our run differential would project us winning. (Last year we finished +9.) On Boston in the AL is better, having won 4 more games than run differential would suggest. Cleveland is 6 games BELOW where they should be.

QUOTE(vandy125 @ Jun 29, 2006 -> 10:58 AM) I have a co-worker that is a big Twins fan, and he is getting pretty frustrated that his "red-hot" Twins have not been able to gain any ground. He keeps saying "would you guys lose one already?" It won't be long before the Twins pass the Yanks for the 4th best record in the AL, yet it's not going to get them to the dance unless the Tigers swoon. I would probably vote the Twins the team I'd least like to face in a 5-game playoff set because Santana/Liriano is a brutal combo.

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Jun 28, 2006 -> 03:54 PM) It's not the best they can do; it's all the more KW has to do. The Sox may not even need him, because the pen appears to be pretty much set - trading for Hernandez is a trade to bring in depth, and it is nothing more than that. Umm..... The pen is only "set" if Politte returns looking like he did last year. If he's going to continue pitching like he did this year, they'll have to put him back on the DL, cut him, or trade him. We have a few weeks to find out which direction we'll have to take.

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Jun 28, 2006 -> 04:00 PM) He was too pricey before then too At 1 HR and slugging under .400, it is hard to know how cheaply he might have been let go by San Diego. They have no long term investment in him, and until recently he wasn't helping them at all offensively. I'm also still reasonably concerned that Brian Anderson isn't going to come around. If Uribe keeps hitting, and Pods hits closer to his May numbers rather than his June totals, we can get by with one out in the lineup. But to pass the Tigers and secure home field, it is going to take a torrid pace, and we are going to need all the help we can get. I'd still ask SD what they would want for Cameron. He's about the only outfielder that could be on the market who could approach Anderson's defense.

These are essential games to win. Squeekers when we aren't at our best. I'd love to see us never give up more than 3 runs in any game during these series against Pitt and the Cubs. The Twins have had a streak like that for 8 games and counting.

QUOTE(fathom @ Jun 28, 2006 -> 09:09 PM) Not really. We had a deep fly out and Dye just missed connecting on a long ball also. As I said, I'm only watching Gameday, and going back and forth I didn't see how deep the balls were. Still, it was a very quick inning for them.

QUOTE(fathom @ Jun 28, 2006 -> 09:06 PM) Are you serious? I would have wanted a 10 spot against him. Me too. But after 5 pitches and 3 outs, he looks like he'd be an upgrade for our bullpen.

Are the Pirates "showcasing" Roberto Hernandez here? Do we want to light him up, and not trade for him? Or see him pitch well so he seems more attractive? (We could still win the game with the lead we have.) (I'm not watching live -- just Gameday -- so by the time I posted, this was already answered.)

I don't agree with the way Ozzie has managed the top of the 7th. When Capps came in, why not pinch hit Mack for Anderson? Then, after he announced Thome and Marte came in, why not pinch hit Ozuna? I guarantee Mack against a righty and Ozuna against a lefty would be a much better matchup than BA against a rightie and Thome against a lefty would could, and did, strike him out. Lucky Pods bailed Ozzie out with a single off Marte.

QUOTE(CanOfCorn @ Jun 27, 2006 -> 04:04 PM) Posturing. I'm sure they approached the Phillies. Maybe even made an offer, but to quote a phrase...where would he play? I doubt he'd want to DH. Do they put him in left? Do they trade one of their young outfielders to make room? I don't know...I doubt they do it. To get the deal done, the Tigers might have to promise Abreu that he would play RF. So they'd have to approach Maggs and ask him to move to LF. If I were Detroit, I'd happily give Philly the choice of Monroe or Thames, plus 2-3 pitchers that I don't need this year. Down the stretch, the Tigers pitching is going to hit a wall just like our starting pitching did in the second half last year. Adding offense would be the best way to try to win some of the games where they surrender a few more runs. And it would help them a lot in the postseason. The hope for us is that Abreu, even if the Tigers got him, would slump in the second half just like he did last year.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Jun 28, 2006 -> 07:15 AM) Question - Who else thinks from here on out to the end of the season, Minnesota will have a better record than Detroit? I definitely think Minny will have a better record than Detroit from this point forward. On another post, I have them playing between .600 and .667 ball and ending up with 94-95 wins. I think they'll be better than the runner-up team in the AL East and the winner of the AL West. So the AL Central will have 3 of the 4 best teams in baseball. (The Mets may win more games, but the NL is a total joke.) I'm just glad that Minny may have taken too long to get it together. I would not want to face Santana/Liriano in a 5 or 7 game series. As for Detroit, I think they will almost certainly hold on well enough to make the postseason -- with 98-100 wins -- but as the wild card, I don't think they will get past a likely first round matchup against Boston.

I'm going to go back to my original thought, which is that Minnesota is going to end up with 94-95 wins this year. Granted, they are almost done with beating up on the National League, and even Kansas City will give them more trouble than many of those teams. But with Santana/Liriano penciled in to win 4 out of every 10 games, they only have to split the other 6 games to keep on a .700 win pace. If that's too high (and it is), a .667 pace from here on out leaves them at 98 wins. A .600 pace leaves them at 92 wins. I think they'll end up somewhere in between, which will probably be better than the runner-up in the AL East and the winner of the AL West. At the end of the day, the AL Central could have 3 of the 4 best teams in the American League (and baseball, since the National League is SO PATHETIC), with one of them sitting out the postseason. The Sox probably need to win 100+ games to win this division.

A few things concern me about Roberto. 1.40 WHIP. That's way too many baserunners. He's always one bad pitch away from blowing saves or leads with that many men on base. 15 runs v. 8 ERs. Is he really a 2.15 ERA guy? If you count all the runs, its closer to 4.00. Sure, only earned runs count, and the Sox have great infield defense, but I wonder. On the plus side, the 2 HRs in 33+ innings is huge. And I like the GB/FB ratio that's been mentioned above. For a middling prospect, I suppose it is hard to argue against making such a move. But is this the best a WS champion can do? We need to try to get our bullpen back to where it was last year down the stretch. Jenks -- Fine Cotts -- Fine (getting back to something close to last year) Thornton -- An improvement on Marte, could become outstanding Riske -- A good stand-in for Cliff Politte's role last year. McCarthy -- has been bounced around in his roles -- still trying to find himself. Should be the guy saving games that Vazquez, Garland, Garcia, et al. don't pitch well in, or winning extra-inning contests. Politte -- who knows what we'll get once he's off the DL? Hermanson? -- don't count on anything here. We need that right hander who can pitch as well as Hermanson did early and Politte did late. It won't be easy to find.

Bobby Abreu. I don't really want to think about the Tigers getting him, but it would make the most sense for them to try. As a lefty high OBP outfielder/DH, he is a perfect fit for that team. They need offense, and could probably put together some kind of package that Pat Gillick would almost have to accept, especially if they are willing to take on the rest of his salary (including $15 million next year). I think the biggest thing that may prevent the trade is Abreu himself. Given his no-trade status, he may want a big incentive to leave Philly. Hopefully it will be too much for the Tigers to pull the trigger.

I posted this thread on June 11th. Since then, Cameron has hit 6 HRs in 12 games. (Plus Dave Roberts, who could have slid over to CF, has gone on the DL.) Ah well. He would have been a great addition. Now, he'd likely be too pricey.

Anything less than a sweep of the 6 games against the Pirates and Cubs and we'll be losing ground. I hate this kind of stretch. What would be really nice is if the starters step up and take control of each of these games. We could use a stretch where we give up 3 or fewer runs/game.

QUOTE(TLAK @ Jun 27, 2006 -> 07:03 AM) I've updated a chart I made at the time of the trade to include Javy's starts this year. This calc's his ERA for each start, and counts how many games are quality ( Javy remains the little girl with the curl, when he's good he's very good, when he's bad he's terrible. This year is consistant with his past years, whether plays on a good team or a bad team. I think the White Sox are getting exactly what was expected. I love the chart, but I think it shows that JV has not readjusted well to the American League. Here's the percentage breakdown for your categories (I'm leaving out his first year): 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 Quality 30% 36% 56% 47% 50% 31% 48% 46% Meh 26% 42% 12% 29% 29% 40% 21% 13% Horrible 42% 21% 31% 23% 20% 28% 30% 46% He has by far the highest percentage of Horrible games outside his first two years in the league (I tossed the first year). His quality starts are about his norm. What he's been unable to do is keep from blowing up in games -- from keeping Meh starts from turning into Horrible ones. I think part of his adjustment is getting in his head Ozzie's management style. Ozzie is one of the only managers in baseball that sends all his starters out for their 100-115 pitch workload and lets the chips fall where they may. If the starter pitches well, he's going to have every opportunity to get the win. But if he slacks or gets shelled, he's still got to put in the work. In the long run, this has advantages. It forces the starters to take complete responsibility for the games they start. Ozzie is telling them -- hey, this is your game to win. Also, since the hook is based on a pitch count and not innings, pitchers will maximize their chances of winning games by conserving pitches and lasting later into games. But for pitchers used to seeing a hook at the first sign of trouble, especially in the middle innings, it can also be unnerving. Ozzie's not going to throw you a life jacket until you've thrown your 100+ pitches, even though we have someone in McCarthy who should be able to pitch 2-3 innings every couple of days and get our often-shaky starters off the hook. It remains to be seen whether JV will develop the mental toughness to buy into Ozzie's (and Coop's) approach. I think we have to give him the second half to find out.

No lead is safe against us. Twins score 7 in first inning and lose 9-7. Tribe leads 10-2 in the bottom of the 9th. Sox bring tying run to the plate (Tadahito) before falling just short 10-8. Astros take 9-1 lead into the bottom of the 7th. Sox score 8 runs in last three innings, including GS with two outs in the bottom of the 9th (Tadahito making up for getting the last out against Cleveland) to tie the game at 9-9. Unfortunately, we lose 10-9 in the 13th. I wish our pitching was better, but this offense is better than the 2000 version that scored 900+ runs.

Overall, there isn't a whit of difference between Freddy Garcia's and Javier Vazquez's numbers this year. Freddie, in fact, is the one giving up the long ball more frequently -- 17 v. 9 for JV. Freddy Garcia 15 15 9 4 0 9 0 96.2 102 50 51 17 24 57 5.31 103.3 1.30 4.66 Javier Vazquez 15 15 8 4 0 8 0 95.1 101 53 54 9 24 75 7.08 103.9 1.31 5.00 So, both of these guys need to pick it up. But I think there is evidence they will. We know Freddie's history. Here's Vazquez's game log until last night. Apr. 8 @KC L 4-3 7.0 5 2 2 0 1 7 5 11 98 28 65 - - 2.57 Apr. 14 TOR L 13-7 6.0 9 7 7 1 1 4 7 9 102 27 29 L(0-1) - 6.23 Apr. 19 KC W 4-0 8.0 2 0 0 0 1 7 6 9 108 26 84 W(1-1) - 3.86 Apr. 25 @SEA W 13-3 6.0 4 2 2 0 2 2 9 3 109 22 56 W(2-1) - 3.67 May. 1 @CLE W 8-6 6.0 6 1 0 0 3 7 7 5 100 26 62 W(3-1) - 3.00 May. 6 KC W 9-2 7.2 4 2 2 0 0 6 10 8 116 26 69 W(4-1) - 2.88 May. 13 @MIN L 8-4 5.2 10 7 7 1 0 2 10 9 86 29 23 L(4-2) - 3.89 May. 18 @TB L 5-4 7.0 8 5 5 2 1 4 7 13 109 30 44 L(4-3) - 4.22 May. 23 OAK W 9-3 6.0 6 3 3 1 4 3 9 7 109 29 47 W(5-3) - 4.25 May. 29 @CLE W 11-0 6.0 2 0 0 0 3 4 7 6 106 23 69 W(6-3) - 3.86 Jun. 3 TEX W 8-6 6.1 11 5 5 0 1 7 10 10 115 32 37 W(7-3) - 4.14 Jun. 9 CLE W 5-4 5.2 7 3 3 0 1 9 10 4 110 29 51 - - 4.19 Jun. 14 @TEX L 8-0 6.0 10 6 6 2 2 7 11 6 99 30 33 L(7-4) - 4.54 Jun. 20 STL W 20-6 6.0 7 2 2 0 2 3 11 8 97 26 51 W(8-4) - 4.43 Out of 15 starts, 9 have been "quality" starts. That's not very consistent. However, it is also very possible he'll have a run like he had at the start of the season with 5 out of 6 very good games. After all, none of our starters has been perfectly consistent this year -- not even undefeated Jose Contreras. I think the jury is still out on Vazquez. But there's no way we'll trade him mid-year at this point (and I was the one who wrote the "Sign Contreras, Trade Vazquez mid-year" thread in the offseason). McCarthy has been inconsistent himself and still gives us important bullpen depth. We need to hang in there with our starters. Once our bullpen comes around -- and with the addition of Riske and the maturation of Matt Thornton it is looking a lot better -- I expect our starters to start to click.

Sox have a bigger run differential so far this year -- 98 runs -- than they had all last year -- 96 -- and we're not even that close to being half way.

Last year, we all know that we won the opening game of the season 1-0, the opening game of the second half 1-0, and the final game of the year 1-0, with three different pitchers doing the honors -- Buehrle, Contreras, and Garcia. We also won games 2-1 (Cleveland), 2-1 (Seattle), 3-1 (Minnesota), 3-2 (KC), 2-1 (KC), 3-2 (Balt.), 2-1 (Angels), 2-1 (Colo.), 2-1 (Detroit), 3-1 (Seattle), 2-1 (Yanks), 2-1 (Yanks) back to back, 2-1 (Minn.), 2-1 (Detroit), 1-0 (KC), 2-1 (Minn.), 3-1 (Minn), 3-2 (Cleve.), 3-1 (Cleve). In the playoffs we also beat LAA 2-1. That was 23 victories (out of 110 - 21%) when scoring 3 runs or less. Those close, low scoring, games defined our season and our team. This year, until last night, our lowest scoring victory was 2-1 over the Angels on April 29. We've also had a 3-1 win over KC. We've also beaten KC and Oakland 3-2. And that's it. 5 games this year (out of 47 - 10%) scoring less than 4 runs in a victory. Now, I'm not willing to sacrifice our much-improved offense to go back to those days. I just think last night's win is going to put a jolt of energy into this team that should get us playing on an even higher level than we have been recently. Beating a great NL team like St. Louis 20-6, 13-5, and then 1-0 on a single hit means the Sox can play any kind of baseball and still come out on top. Until last night, I wasn't sure that was true of the 2006 Sox (and I'm not sure they knew if it was true either). I think during this series the 2006 version of the Chicago White Sox has finally arrived! GO WHITE SOX!!!

QUOTE(Gregory Pratt @ Jun 22, 2006 -> 09:53 AM) Our pitching has been excellent these last couple of weeks. Really? Over the last 14 games, our pitching has given up 63 runs, for a 4.50 ERA. In that time, Garcia has had 1 terrible start and one good one. Same for Vazquez. Contreras was saved in his last game by our offense, which rallied from 3-1 and 5-3 deficits. Buehrle has won two in a row, but yesterday said he felt like he didn't deserve to win the game based on the way he pitched. He also got bailed out of a 4-3 loss to Cleveland by Jermaine Dye's 8th inning heroics. Garland has had two great starts and one where he gave up 6 runs to the Tigers. We also won another game against Cleveland with 2 runs in the bottom of the 11th after our bullpen surrendered the lead in the top half of the inning. We've gone 11-3 over our last 14 mostly because our offense has put up a ton of runs -- 8 runs or more in 8 out of our last 10 games. And when we didn't score that many, we rallied to win a couple more games late. Our pitching is better than it has performed to this point. When we finally get a 6-deep bullpen, look out, because we are really going to go on a tear.

After the last two days, we stand atop the heap. Here are the top-10. RK TEAM G AB R H 2B 3B HR TB RBI BA OBP SLG OPS 1 Chicago Sox 71 2466 415 707 120 11 105 1164 395 .287 .355 .472 .827 2 NY Yankees 70 2440 404 699 128 8 87 1104 393 .286 .370 .452 .822 3 Cleveland 71 2480 391 700 148 10 89 1135 370 .282 .354 .458 .811 4 Toronto 71 2459 388 727 147 10 101 1197 372 .296 .363 .487 .850 5 Texas 72 2516 385 716 175 10 80 1151 377 .285 .348 .457 .805 6 Boston 70 2446 382 699 140 6 84 1103 362 .286 .369 .451 .820 7 LA Dodgers 71 2468 379 687 133 23 67 1067 367 .278 .356 .432 .788 8 NY Mets 71 2528 378 673 152 17 97 1150 360 .266 .335 .455 .790 9 Detroit 73 2544 373 690 132 17 101 1159 355 .271 .327 .456 .782 10 Cincinnati 72 2474 364 643 141 8 103 1109 348 .260 .343 .448 .791 We may not keep this position -- there are 8 teams within 40 runs of us -- but it is a testament to the way we go about hitting. I've watched several games recently on gameday. The advantage is you see quite clearly how infrequently our guys swing at balls out of the strike zone. Our plate discipline was a key reason we won the WS last year, and it has carried over. Couple that with the power we have up and down the lineup, and it makes for a very potent attack. I also don't think it's going to fade because, while some guys who are going great may not project out at those high levels throughout the year, guys like Uribe, Pods, and Anderson are going to end up better than where they are now. And last night, I don't know if anyone noticed, but through the first 3 innings, we scored 10 runs on 10 hits. No one was left on base. And no batter came up with a man on and made an out. I'd love to see our pitching improve, and we need it to if we want to repeat. But it's great to see our offense kicking ass.