Am I the only one who now believes

[My Dixie Normus]

I am as concerned about this season as I am about the next 5-10. We are looking at a lot of talent either suffering from age and injury or leaving the team at the end of the season if not sooner. Contreras (old), Thome (old), Dye, Buehrle, Crede, Iguchi to name a few. We had a shot to be a serious club again this season. We need a shortstop and left fielder for the defense and leadoff hitter for the offense. But with the potential of all of those names being off the next seasons starting lineup, I am concerned that the Sox will tail spin for another half decade. I am not ready to throw in the towel on this season just yet if only because I really fear what the next few seasons will look like.

[caulfield12]

I am as concerned about this season as I am about the next 5-10. We are looking at a lot of talent either suffering from age and injury or leaving the team at the end of the season if not sooner. Contreras (old), Thome (old), Dye, Buehrle, Crede, Iguchi to name a few. We had a shot to be a serious club again this season. We need a shortstop and left fielder for the defense and leadoff hitter for the offense. But with the potential of all of those names being off the next seasons starting lineup, I am concerned that the Sox will tail spin for another half decade. I am not ready to throw in the towel on this season just yet if only because I really fear what the next few seasons will look like.

 

We need to replace Uribe offensively, not defensively. He's in the Top 5-7 shortstops if you go just by fielding alone, combined with him arm strength.

 

Unfortunately, since KW is not willing to pay top dollar (unless he trades for Jimmy Rollins), it appears we will end up with Omar Vizquel, Eckstein or a 50/50 proposition like Erick Aybar that may or may not turn out to be a regular MLB SS.

[retro1983hat]

It ain't totally over...but it's got one foot off the ledge, and there's a guy behind you with a bat.

 

 

Well at least if the guy behind you is Paulie, JD or Crede, you will not be going anywhere when they swing at you.

[caulfield12]

Well at least if the guy behind you is Paulie, JD or Crede, you will not be going anywhere when they swing at you.

 

Make that Mackowiak, Terrero, Anderson and Cintron and the wind manufactured from their swings might create a wind mighty enough to blow you off the ledge, nonetheless.

[LVSoxFan]

It's still way too early for me to declare this season over. Things have been so bad lately you gotta wonder that the pendulum's going to swing the other way at some point.

 

Houston in '05. Minny last year.

 

I'm not giving up yet. This is just TOO bad. Usually we do well all the way until August or September and then collapse. To suck this bad this early... I'm keeping my options open.

[Tannerfan]

Anyone who says the season is over has no understanding of the history of baseball. Is this team good enough to come back? I don't know. Is it possible based on being 1 game under on June 1st? Definitely.

I am shocked at how negative this board has become over the past several months.

[StrangeSox]

Anyone who says the season is over has no understanding of the history of baseball. Is this team good enough to come back? I don't know. Is it possible based on being 1 game under on June 1st? Definitely.

I am shocked at how negative this board has become over the past several months.

 

It's been this way since the team completely collapsed during the Boston series near the All-Star break last year. The White Sox have been playing very bad baseball since then and don't show many signs of improvement.

[GoSox05]

for those of you who think the season is over, I'll take your tickets.

 

Way to back your team. Its makes me sick.

 

Im glad i was never on a team with most of you.

 

Down 1-0 in the first inning. I QUIT. ITS OVER. WAHAHAHAH.

 

bunch of babies.

[Tannerfan]

for those of you who think the season is over, I'll take your tickets.

 

Way to back your team. Its makes me sick.

 

Im glad i was never on a team with most of you.

 

Down 1-0 in the first inning. I QUIT. ITS OVER. WAHAHAHAH.

 

bunch of babies.

Best Post of the week.

[StrangeSox]

I love SoxTalk hyperbole.

 

Don't think the team is very good? Then I'm a much better fan than you! This team will ROXORZ!!! Just wait until the weather heats up/ pitching comes around/ bullpen settles in/ offense starts clicking/ whole team gels/ cliched excuse.

 

Think this team is playoff-bound? You've got your head up your butt! Don't you see how bad they are?! They're going to finish behind the Royals!

 

I don't think this team will make the playoffs. That doesn't make me a bad fan. That doesn't mean I won't support the team and go to some games this summer. It just means that, looking at the current situation, I don't think this is a playoff-caliber team. I'll still watch a majority of the Sox games this year. If they win, great! If they lose, oh well. I won't be keeping my eyes on the standings.

 

By the way, a more appropriate analogy would be down 12-2 in the 4th. Sure, its possible that you'll come back, but not very likely given the current level of play.

[klaus kinski]

Of course its not over-thats why it can be salvaged by our GM waking up and doing what he should have done last December.

[caulfield12]

I love SoxTalk hyperbole.

 

Don't think the team is very good? Then I'm a much better fan than you! This team will ROXORZ!!! Just wait until the weather heats up/ pitching comes around/ bullpen settles in/ offense starts clicking/ whole team gels/ cliched excuse.

 

Think this team is playoff-bound? You've got your head up your butt! Don't you see how bad they are?! They're going to finish behind the Royals!

 

I don't think this team will make the playoffs. That doesn't make me a bad fan. That doesn't mean I won't support the team and go to some games this summer. It just means that, looking at the current situation, I don't think this is a playoff-caliber team. I'll still watch a majority of the Sox games this year. If they win, great! If they lose, oh well. I won't be keeping my eyes on the standings.

 

By the way, a more appropriate analogy would be down 12-2 in the 4th. Sure, its possible that you'll come back, but not very likely given the current level of play.

 

I saw this last year at WSI, except multiplied tenfold.

 

The posters who saw the imminent collapse coming, they were shouted down. If you're a "realist," you're a "Dark Cloud." I find the whole "sides" (since everyone here loves the White Sox) very amusing, but it's polarized, whether the subject is Erstad/Anderson, who's to blame for the current mess...there's no "clear cut" person to blame, although Ozzie and KW will take turns falling on the sword for each other and for Greg Walker and the scouting department. Williams will say "the buck stop here" and promise to redouble his efforts and not allow the word "rebuilding" to be used. I'm still waiting for Ozzie to call KW a "loser" for trading some of his veteran players in June and July.

 

From the end of August through the end of September in 06, nary a peep out of the "positivists," they simply disappeared and everyone tuned out the White Sox, except for Garcia's no-no flirtation in Anaheim.

[StrangeSox]

From the end of August through the end of September in 06, nary a peep out of the "positivists," they simply disappeared and everyone tuned out the White Sox, except for Garcia's no-no flirtation in Anaheim.

 

Now they're back in full force and trying to shout down anyone who sees the same pattern of play. Go figure.

[Balta1701]

Anyone who says the season is over has no understanding of the history of baseball. Is this team good enough to come back? I don't know. Is it possible based on being 1 game under on June 1st? Definitely.

I am shocked at how negative this board has become over the past several months.

Of the 103 teams that went on to win a World Series, just three -- the 1914 "Miracle" Braves (20-30), the 2003 Marlins (21-29) and 1924 Senators (24-26) -- were even one game below .500 after 50 games.

...

Of the 24 wild-card playoff teams since the invention of wild-card playoff teams in 1995, three of them -- the 2005 Astros (-10½), the 2003 Marlins (-8) and the 2001 A's (-8) were at least eight games out in that race by the end of May.

Stolen from Jayson Stark's article yesterday.

[BigEdWalsh]

I saw this last year at WSI, except multiplied tenfold.

 

The posters who saw the imminent collapse coming, they were shouted down. If you're a "realist," you're a "Dark Cloud."

 

Precisely the reason that I left WSI behind for good in the middle of the 2005 season. It got very hateful towards the "realists". People got banned left and right. I got so sick of all that hate-filled dark cloud crap.

Right now it's obvious that the Sox are, in my humble opinion, in need of a shakeup or something. As stated they have been playing pretty bad baseball all in all since the middle of last season.

On a happy note, I'm about to embark (by car) from Utah for Wisconsin for a quick little summer vacation. My son and I will be at our first White Sox game in 2 years Tuesday night. It'll be my youngest daughter's introduction to White Soxdom. YEAH!!!

[RME JICO]

Stolen from Jayson Stark's article yesterday.

 

Of the 103 teams that went on to win a World Series, just three -- the 1914 "Miracle" Braves (20-30), the 2003 Marlins (21-29) and 1924 Senators (24-26) -- were even one game below .500 after 50 games.

...

Of the 24 wild-card playoff teams since the invention of wild-card playoff teams in 1995, three of them -- the 2005 Astros (-10½), the 2003 Marlins (-8) and the 2001 A's (-8) were at least eight games out in that race by the end of May.

So you're saying there's a chance! We're only one game below .500 and only 4 out from the WC. Edited June 1, 2007 by RME JICO

[caulfield12]

Precisely the reason that I left WSI behind for good in the middle of the 2005 season. It got very hateful towards the "realists". People got banned left and right. I got so sick of all that hate-filled dark cloud crap.

Right now it's obvious that the Sox are, in my humble opinion, in need of a shakeup or something. As stated they have been playing pretty bad baseball all in all since the middle of last season.

On a happy note, I'm about to embark (by car) from Utah for Wisconsin for a quick little summer vacation. My son and I will be at our first White Sox game in 2 years Tuesday night. It'll be my youngest daughter's introduction to White Soxdom. YEAH!!!

 

Congrats, I'm going to vacation in the Philippines for six weeks (leaving on June 13th) and then teaching in China for a year, so I'll have to follow the White Sox at 7 or 8 am in the mornings, I guess. Even worse, a day game would start at 2 am!!!

 

That will be really weird. I'm hoping my mlb.tv at 700K will work with my laptop, otherwise I'll be listening to mlb radio and be stuck with Farmer and Singleton.

Edited June 1, 2007 by caulfield12

[Controlled Chaos]

So you're saying there's a chance! We're only one game below .500 and only 4 out from the WC.

Last year from 6/6 to 7/6 we played 29 games and won 22 of them. This included some tough games against Detroit, Texas, the World Series Cardinals, the prior World Series Astros and a heated rivalry with the Cubs. I think they have this kind of run in them again. Nothing is clicking right now. This is not blind optimism. We had pitching click early on. We have some hitting as of late, but the pitching has dropped off. When both things get on track we can make a nice run, especially with our upcoming schedule. The season isn't over. Sit back relax and strap it down!!

[elrockinMT]

that the season is over?

 

 

The end is not near-the season is not over. There is a lot of baseball to be played.

[CanOfCorn]

The Twins were 24-29 and 11 1/2 games back last year. They seem to have won the division if I remember correctly.

[Milkman delivers]

I'm not as upset as I usually am when this type of realization occurs. I wasn't able to watch an actual game until a week and a half ago, so I never really had my expectations set. But, to my point:

 

We can get a WHOLE LOT of good, young prospects for a bunch of our players. If we're going to rebuild, I want us to go all into it. Trade every last piece that we can to improve ourselves in a couple years.

 

I'm talking Buehrle, Contreras, Vazquez, MacDougal, Dye, Iguchi, Uribe, and Crede. Maybe even Thornton, AJ, and anyone I forgot that's not young. Put them all on the market, see what we can get.

[The Ginger Kid]

From Phil Arvia...

 

Trade winds blowing early across Chicago

 

June 1, 2007

 

Trades and I don't get along.

 

It has been that way ever since a neighbor talked me out of a Roberto Clemente bubble gum card in exchange for a Joel Horlen.

 

Well, see, Horlen was on the White Sox, and I couldn't have been more than 8 years old, and Clemente had probably only made 10 All-Star teams by then, and ...

 

Trades and I don't get along.

 

So it's probably a good thing Kobe Bryant backed off his trade request Wednesday in roughly the time most of us spend commuting each day.

 

And it's probably a good thing the Cubs' Jim Hendry told reporters at Wrigley he'd not be starting a fire sale.

 

And it's probably a good thing most White Sox fans think it's too early to back up the truck on the South Side.

 

Except, I don't think so. And I do think somebody with the initials John Paxson should be putting a Kobe package together just for giggles -- which we'll get back to in a minute.

 

The Sox aren't done only in the sense that turkeys, after cooking, should cool for a bit before being carved. By that point, the result is inevitable.

 

Your Chicago White Sox aren't making the playoffs this year, not with three teams to climb over in the division and three in the wild-card race and a timid bullpen and a one-dimensional offense and ...

 

This is not merely a gut feeling -- though my gut tells me Ken Williams has lost the annual crapshoot that bullpen building is for any general manager, the position players as a whole are generally too slow and/or too old, and we have not heard the last of A.J. Pierzynski getting on someone's last nerve.

 

Rather, the folks at coolstandings.com, in their Thursday projections, gave the Sox a 1.9 percent chance of making the playoffs. This, they base on a computer simulation of the remainder of the major league schedule, played 1,000,000 times.

 

By the same measure, the Cubs have a 33.5 percent chance of reaching the postseason.

 

I'd give them better odds, considering the woebegone state of the National League Central. Either way, Hendry seems wise to be a buyer whenever he jumps into the trade market.

 

Williams should sell, or at least get out the word that he would consider selling. And if the next three weeks don't prove me wrong, he should open the store.

 

Sure, it may be early. But Williams struck more than a month before the trading deadline in snagging Freddy Garcia on June 27, 2004.

 

If he can use some of the veteran commodities at his disposal to transform his team into the speedy, pitching and defense-oriented club his manager claims to want, Williams should do so.

 

Besides, he has to realize that if Mark Buehrle has a season that warrants keeping him around, he'll be too expensive as a free agent to afford. He has to realize Jermaine Dye is a classic stretch run acquisition for a contender and a bad risk for the multiyear deal he'll want in the offseason.

 

Speaking of bad risks, should we ever believe an athlete demanding relocation?

 

When Bryant did so, ESPN.com, courtesy of house blogger Bill Simmons, cranked out no fewer than seven trade scenarios in the brief window before the Lakers star changed his mind.

 

His favorite was Bryant and Vladimir Radmanovic for Phoenix's Shawn Marion, Leandro Barbosa, Marcus Banks and the No. 19 pick in the draft. Since that's patently nuts (trading Bryant within the division?), here's his No. 2:

 

Bryant for Ben Gordon, Luol Deng, Viktor Khryapa and the No. 9 pick.

 

There would be financial shenanigans required (renouncing P.J. Brown's contract). There are other permutations the Bulls could try.

 

But do you think a starting lineup of Bryant, Kirk Hinrich, a healthy Andres Nocioni, Tyrus Thomas and Ben Wallace could handle Detroit next year? I think it's worth a chat.

 

But then, trades and I don't get along.

[Controlled Chaos]

I'm not as upset as I usually am when this type of realization occurs. I wasn't able to watch an actual game until a week and a half ago, so I never really had my expectations set. But, to my point:

 

We can get a WHOLE LOT of good, young prospects for a bunch of our players. If we're going to rebuild, I want us to go all into it. Trade every last piece that we can to improve ourselves in a couple years.

 

I'm talking Buehrle, Contreras, Vazquez, MacDougal, Dye, Iguchi, Uribe, and Crede. Maybe even Thornton, AJ, and anyone I forgot that's not young. Put them all on the market, see what we can get.

Can we take Buerhle off the list please??

[fathom]

Can we take Buerhle off the list please??

 

Why, he's the guy that can bring in the best value and the guy most likely to not be back this season.

[Balta1701]

Can we take Buerhle off the list please??

Until he's signed, he's at the top of the list. End of discussion. Want him off the list? Extend contract.