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Balta1701

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Balta1701 last won the day on March 14

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About Balta1701

  • Birthday 01/22/1981

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    http://the-earth-story.com

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  • Favorite Sox Minor League Affiliate
    Birmingham Barons (AA)
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    2005: Rookie of the Year2006:Leftist of the Year2007:Lefty of the Year2009: Lefty (DEM)
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    He Who Must Not Be Named
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    October 26th, 2005. Sitting in a class with my computer open on MLB's gameday.
  • Favorite Former Sox Player
    Frank Thomas.

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  1. For a guy who doesn't rely on velocity and who has an issue with the long ball, there could be similar benefits to pitching in Charlotte. If those hitters push him to identify a couple things he needs to improve on, that could be important too. But anyway, the important thing right now is actually to give him time at AA. I'm only bringing this up because people here and on twitter have been talking about bringing him north this year since he was performing well in his first 10 spring training innings. Let's put him at AA, see what he does there, and figure out the path.
  2. I'm convincible by that, if it's actually clearly beating the league for 3 months. If he's u know putting up an ERA of like 4 this year, then spending some time at AAA next year won't be a mistake. Leaping from high A to the big leagues? Naw, at least make the jump to AA first and show me he can handle AA. He hasn't done this leap yet, skipping past it because he was having a good 15 innings in spring training? Naw, go to AA.
  3. At least to me, if you want to get him to 120 innings, the safest way to do that and perhaps the only way to do that is to drop the stress of some of those innings by making them minor league innings.
  4. And if there's any day during a major league season that is routine and forgettable, it's opening day.
  5. I don't want him out of the bullpen! Putting him in the bullpen was Hahns thing, it was as intelligent as every other move Hahn made. Send him to Charlotte, use him as an opener, build him up with 3 innings an outing against minor league competition for April, 4 innings per outing in May, give him a break there, move to 5 innings or so in June, then evaluate what his arm is doing, how his body is feeling, how his off speed pitches look, how his velocity has gone. If everything has gone to plan, call him back up mid-year and let him inch his way into the rotation with pretty clear innings limits in the second half. If there are any setbacks, be patient, and try to make sure you don't do anything that shreds his elbow or shoulder again. Figure out when you want to shut him down from there - I am not as into the 80 innings limit as some people are, if he works his way up to the big leagues and throws more innings than that, at least I kept the intensity low on some of the early ones rather than having him go against big leaguers, but still be super cautious in the 2nd half about making sure he gets extra rest.
  6. I'd say right around July 1 if he stays healthy and has no set backs. Take it easy, ramp him up slowly, a couple innings per start at first, maybe even use an IL stint around mid-May to give his arm a break, and evaluate as you go. See how his arm holds up at first, build him up so maybe he can give you 5 innings, then let him face big leaguers. Frankly, it probably wouldn't hurt him to have some days where he focuses on throwing his offspeed stuff as much as he can at AAA either. Go a whole inning or two without any fastballs, get the feel for both the changeup and slider as a starter would.
  7. Exactly. Thorpe has barely made it to AA, he has 1 full season at high-A ball. He should be at AA at least until he's so dominant there that he earns a callup to AA, or otherwise for nearly the full season. If you want to talk to me next offseason about jumping him from AA to the big leagues, I probably still wont' like it and would argue for time at AAA, but that's at least feasible. I wouldn't care one bit about him having a bad start today, he's on a new team and mid-March is normal "Dead arm period" for pitchers as they ramp up. But we heard way too many versions of "calling Thorpe up based on his spring training" here and elsewhere online over the past few days, and shutting that down is fine by me.
  8. And when he gets hurt again, you won't blame the people who made the decisions. We've seen that before, with this pitcher.
  9. Even Pedro can't tell us that a guy with a 7.45 ERA had a great spring, right?
  10. At the very least we don't have to hear about how his great spring training justifies him skipping AA and AAA.
  11. Yeah I don't care one iota about Reinsdorf's pocket book or the extra year of control here. This is a risky strategy because it's risky to take a guy with arm problems and no history of building up innings and put him into max-stress innings against big leaguers when you should be trying to build his arm up. If he gets hurt, people will just say "Oh he would have never made it as a starter", when the org just can't help themselves but find the high risk things to do on the way. Send the guy walking into a minefield and if he doesn't make it across its his fault.
  12. Yes. So a guy throws a baseball and therefore he is now stretched out to be a big league starter. No multi-year conditioning effort required! He stretched out in the offseason. Frankly, ludicrous. I'm as into turning him into a starter as anyone, and this is a super high risk way to do it. We know his arm isn't well conditioned as he has never thrown innings and you cannot do that magically, guys get hurt when they try that. We know that in the modern big leagues it is a max effort league, guys throw way harder than they did even 10 years ago. Taking no time to even build up his arm because he threw a baseball in the offseason...blah. Standard White Sox fare, pretend guys don't get hurt and act stunned when things go wrong with the plan, it's how Crochet was treated all along.
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